


Valentine & Vimes: Going Nuclear

by Aleaiactaest, Slyjinks



Series: Valentine & Vimes [1]
Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett, Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Alcohol, Arson (it happens but not a lot), Cannibalism (Mentioned), Canon-Typical Violence, Catholicism, Character Death, Crossover, Demonic semi-possession, Detective bromance to romance, Discworld series end spoilers, Drug reference, Evil experimentation, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Fallout 4 Far Harbor DLC spoilers, Fallout 4 Spoilers, Internalized Homophobia, Isekai, M/M, Mind Screw, Murder, Nuclear Weapons, Plot with small sprinklings of porn, Post-Apocalyptic, Post-Nuclear War, Sam Vimes is the Sole Survivor, Sexual content placed in its own separate labelled chapters so it can be skipped as needed, Slavery (mostly robots and synths), Smoking, Video Game Style Violence, Violence, canon typical ableist language, death the character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-06-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:21:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 25
Words: 167,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23478406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aleaiactaest/pseuds/Aleaiactaest, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slyjinks/pseuds/Slyjinks
Summary: When the strange goggles attached to the Wizard-created "icono-game" were slammed down in front of Commander Sam Vimes' eyes, he didn't know what to expect. When the frost cleared, the first thing he saw was Sybil murdered and young Sam kidnapped, and because there's no world where Sam Vimes could allow that to stand, he gave chase into a world like no world he'd ever seen, where he knew no one and no one recognized him. He'd have to find new allies to help him deal with dangers that, while new, still felt sickeningly familiar. Because some things never change.Note: A few individual chapters are explicit, and are clearly marked. The fic as a whole is Mature.
Relationships: DiMA/Faraday (Fallout), Male Sole Survivor/Nick Valentine, Sam Vimes/Nick Valentine, Sole Survivor/Nick Valentine, Sybil Ramkin/Samuel Vimes
Series: Valentine & Vimes [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1689076
Comments: 143
Kudos: 47





	1. Sweet Rolls, not Soul Cakes * Leprous Piranhas * Out of Time * High Road

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has a playlist available on Youtube:  
> [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLEELrwJ-FyotucudE52BnFg6vVn1AGne ](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLEELrwJ-FyotucudE52BnFg6vVn1AGne)
> 
> Slyjinks: Almost a year ago, when I was about halfway through my first play-through of Fallout 4, I mentioned to Aleaiactaest that I was enjoying imagining a team-up between Discworld’s Commander Sam Vimes and Fallout’s Detective Nick Valentine, although I didn’t know at the time how such an event would happen. Aleaiactaest, who had never played Fallout but had second-hand familiarity with Nick, had a lot of ideas about how that would happen. Inspired by our talk, the next afternoon I created a Vimes Sole Survivor and started a new game. Aleaiactaest watched me play, and while I played, they began writing scenes for the fic series that has more or less consumed both our lives ever since. We often write the scenes out of order. Aleaiactaest does most of the actual writing, although I do a fair bit myself, and we often bounce ideas off each other. The art, so far, has been mine, although I seek their feedback for which scenes to illustrate or help in working out a pose. We both have gotten a lot of enjoyment out of putting this together, and we’re excited to finally be sharing some of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter songs: [Going Nuclear](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJS3bIpGYT0&list=PLLEELrwJ-FyotucudE52BnFg6vVn1AGne&index=2&t=0s) by Miracle of Sound and [Propane Nightmares](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04QpInkz9so&list=PLLEELrwJ-FyotucudE52BnFg6vVn1AGne&index=3&t=0s) by Pendulum

_Sweet Rolls, not Soul Cakes * Leprous Piranhas * Out of Time * High Road_

For all that he was the Duke of Ankh, and because he was the Duke of Ankh, Sam Vimes hated high society affairs. Soul Cake Tuesday was coming soon, and it was to such an event that Lady Sybil had dragged him. Everyone was in costume. He didn’t mind the excuse not to wear his ducal regalia, but what he minded, very much, was that more than one society snob had thought it funny to dress up as a Watchman. Fuzzy handcuffs! The nerve of it!

This particular gala event was in the High Energy Building of the Unseen University, because several of the wizards had been working on something or other that Ankh-Morpork’s who’s who (or, as Vimes thought, their Most Wanted, if only tax evasion was easier to prosecute) wished to see. The wizards had very hastily assured everyone that the device had nothing to do with Moving Pictures, but Vimes remained suspicious, because he was a suspicious bastard. He was even suspicious in his dreams.

Vimes was, for his part, dressed as a rather silly dragon, because that was what Willikins had put out for him. Given that Sybil matched him, Vimes didn’t need to be a copper to solve what had happened there. Sybil patted his arm and suggested, “Why don’t you go talk to the Viscount Skater?”

Viscount Skater was dressed up as quite possibly the worst thing in the world: a royal vampire. One was a bloodsucker upon the common man, and the other was undead. Vimes’s right eye twitched. 

Lord Monflathers, who was dressed like a troll in a fashion that made Vimes offended on Detritus’s behalf, took off the device’s strange headset, which looked something like a clear, upside down bowl with lights and metal bits attached. Attached to the front was something sort of like a set of goggles that did the opposite of what goggles should do by not letting anyone see. He proclaimed, “I dare say this is all jolly well for a little game made by men in robes, but the combat’s somewhat lacking, yes?”

Sir Bernard Selachii, who had already been heavily into the brandy bottle, was costumed as someone’s imagination of a cat. Vimes had arrested his brother. Selachii looked over at Vimes and commented cattily, “Oh yes, the combat’s lacking for educated men such as ourselves, but perhaps if the common man were to try it, he might find it more of a challenge.”

Vimes dealt with more combat than he wanted on the job as it was. Some people simply would not allow themselves to be talked down. What did it say, when suicide by copper was preferable to arrest? Maybe he needed to have Carrot take another look at the Tanty again. Vimes ignored Selachii and tried to maneuver his way to the buffet. If wizards knew how to do anything, it was a buffet.

He was intercepted by Archchancellor Ridcully, who greeted, “Sam! Have you tried Ponder’s… er…” No one seemed to have a clear idea of what Ponder’s device was, even if they’d tried it, which made Vimes all the more determined not to let the thing get near him. Ridcully gestured vaguely. “It’s a game, you know. He’d done a simpler one, last year, about hunting waterfowl. Jolly good, but you couldn’t shoot the dog.”

There could be good eating on dogs, admitted the man who’d grown up underfed on Cockbill Street through no fault of his mother, who’d tried, she really had. However, Vimes didn’t like games more complicated than darts. He was a passable Thud! player, but he didn’t like it. Vimes was sure that any game made by wizards would not be to his limited tastes.

“It’s more of an exploration into a simulated reality,” explained Ponder, who seemed to sense that an explanation was required, but unfortunately, it didn’t explain much of anything.

“I’ve got enough problems with my actual reality,” said Sam wearily. One of which was the two wizards blocking him from the buffet. Lady Sybil had wandered off to talk to Lady Brenda Rodley, one of her closest friends, but she’d be back.

One problem was the most recent case, where the young Lai Zhenya had gone missing. She was an unlicensed zither player. So far, a trail of leaves and twigs was found in the cart parking area near where she lived, which had led to a broken mirror covered in blood, which was found buried under a shrub. A torn news clipping was found in a cabinet in her apartment. They had Clues. Vimes despised clues. Clues let armchair detectives think they could just deduce the answer without ever putting their boots on the ground.

Lady Regina Rust was the next to try the machine and, after a long go, took off the bowl-with-goggles-which-were-not. With a fierce look on her face, she proclaimed, “Oh yes, I liked that very much, but I do think that you should add in more options for… the player? Yes, the player of the game. Why, I don’t see why I shouldn’t be able to, er, ‘nuke’ the first settlement that I come across.”

Vimes didn’t know what ‘nuke’ meant, but it sounded unpleasant, like something he wouldn’t wish on three-week-old pizza. Rust sighted Vimes, who had been responsible for her brother’s exile to Fourecks. Vimes had heard that Gravid Rust had recently suffered an unusual spider bite and that his head had shrivelled up and fallen off. He wasn’t expected to be able to live without it. That spider deserved a medal, Vimes thought. Gravid had been responsible near-genocide, slavery, drug smuggling, and first and foremost, the capital crime: murder. Regina Rust did not think the way Vimes did, though, as evinced by her loud and vocal desire to have a game about destroying both commoners and a whole settlement!

Lady Rust closed the distance and dropped the bowl-with-goggles on Vimes’s head, tightening something at the back before he could get them off. She hissed, “Why don’t see what our terribly civic-minded policeman does when he has these sorts of options, hmm?”

The game, as it was, had already started rolling. There was the sense that he’d missed a part. Vimes was reminded disorientingly of the Moving Pictures but also of the wave-tossed feel of a ship at sea. He was trapped and cold, so very cold. There was the suggestion of a woman holding a child, and his brain filled it in for him: Sybil and young Sam.

A shot rang out.

There was no universe, real or unreal, where Sam Vimes could leave the death of Sybil unavenged; where he would not chase his son’s kidnapper to the ends of the world. The cold came again, but when the door opened, a creature of red rage, unreasoning, unflinching, would be released.

The Summoning Dark, demon of vengeance, laughed, and Sam Vimes vanished from the party and gave chase into unreality.

* * *

Ponder Stibbons would rather have been surrounded by leprous piranhas than to be pulled aside by the Duchess Sybil Vimes, Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully, and Patrician Havelock Vetinari to have what was described, quite inaccurately, as a friendly chat. He said weakly, “Well. Erm. Sirs. Madam. I _am_ the Head of Inadvisably Applied Magic…”

The Patrician did not look amused. “Ah. Truth in advertising.”

“Oh don't worry about a thing. We'll have the Commander back in no time at all,” said Ridcully, with all the assurance of someone who had no idea what he was talking about. “It isn’t like he was disintegrated or transmogrified or deliquesed.”

“You say ‘back’. Where has he gone?” asked Lady Sybil. 

It was a reasonable question, but Ponder had an unreasonable answer that he preferred not to voice. He said carefully, “That is an excellent question, madam, and I will get back to you on it later.”

“Then how do you know you can get him back?” continued Lady Sybil. 

Ponder sighed. He was not unaware of his capacity to bore most people, but they had asked. “Hex can detect a reasonably intact morphic field and signs of continued mentation.”

The morphic field that Hex was detecting for Commander Vimes was… odd. Ponder wanted the triple-check the calculations and have someone else take a look, too, before he said too much. 

“See? He's just inside Hex. I daresay we probably need to shrink down the size of ants and rescue him from their queen,” speculated Ridcully. 

Ponder contemplated what shrinking someone down to the size of an ant and letting them wander around in Hex’s anthill would do. Well, Tommy Saxon had been looking for a student project, hadn’t he? Ponder honestly couldn't keep track of how many students he was overseeing, at this point, and it didn’t help that some of them kept getting lost in the library and forming their own research tribes. “Nnnn… Interesting idea, but I don’t think it would be indicated at this juncture. It is more that his morphic field is in, insofar as it can be said to be inside anywhere, an unreal space at a sqrt(-1) heading, with a finite size due to beehive expansion memory limits.”

“Stibbons,” said the Patrician. “If you do not retrieve Commander Vimes from this unreal space soon, you will find that you have very real problems.” He looked to Ridcully. “I should not like to have to advise the Archchancellor on what those problems might be.”

Wizards policed the other wizards. At times, the Patrician might make a suggestion or two. Ponder didn’t want to find out what the Patrician would be suggesting to Ridcully about him. 

* * *

Vimes’s vision went white. He was colder than he had ever been, colder than his near-naked run through Uberwald. If he had been a troll, his thoughts would have sharpened to a diamond’s edge, but he was human, and his thoughts slowed until there was nothing, but the last thing to go was a sensation that retribution was required.

He awoke briefly, and he saw the same scene, only with painful clarity now, despite the fact that the glass was frosted, the view blurry. In front of him, Sybil was entombed in her ‘decontamination pod’, whatever that was, with young Sam, aged seven, sheltering against her. Then, there were the human-sized figures, a woman dressed something like a Knockerman and a man. The woman pointed and said, “This is the one. Here.”

“Open it,” the man said roughly. There was frost in the air as the pod opened. Sybil looked drowsy and lethargic, as if the bone-deep cold had sapped her considerable strength, but she still held young Sam, who cried. 

Sybil mumbled, “Is it over? Are we okay?”

The man said, “Almost. Everything's going to be fine,” and Vimes was not in the least reassured.

The woman said, “Come here... Come here, baby...” to young Sam, who clearly did not want to come anywhere near her, or likely anyone who insisted on calling him a ‘baby’.

The woman moved to take young Sam from Sybil. Sybil bellowed, in that commanding voice of hers, “No, wait. No, I've got him!”

“Let the boy go. I'm only gonna tell you once!” said the man coldly.

Vimes’s gaze had already taken in the man, who was holding something that Vimes knew of as a ‘gonne’. Sybil fought magnificently, as Ramkins women did, trying to protect young Sam from the woman, but the cold had slowed her. Another second to recover from the ice, and Sam was sure Sybil would have laid that woman out, but that was the thing about gonnes.

All they took was a second. 

“I’m not giving you my Sam!” Sybil roared.

The gonne shot, and Sybil fell back, and Vimes knew that she was dead, murdered right in front of him, and oh, there would be retribution, screamed the Summoning Dark. His second thoughts said, he would see _justice_ done, and that wasn’t quite the same thing at all.

The man - the murderer - the _monster_ sneered with disgust and snapped, “Goddammit! Get the kid out of here, and let's go...” The woman departed with young Sam, and the man ambled up to the pod that trapped Vimes. He memorized that face, because he would chase that face, through rain and snow and even the threat of Mrs. Cake, if he had to. That bastard said, “At least we still have the backup...”

Whiteness took Vimes again, kicking him in the shins and dragging him down.

Vimes could not tell how much time had passed when he awoke again, but he was greeted by that same grisly view of Sybil slumped in the pod in front of him. He scrambled out of his pod, feeling frozen and tired and weak. There had been times when Vimes had woken up in gutters, and he’d still felt better then than he did now. He slumped on the floor for a moment, catching his breath. Frost condensed in the air as he exhaled. Then he got up and banged on Sybil’s pod until his knuckles bled. By that point, the physical pain made his emotional pain take a back seat in the carriage, and he studied the pod for a moment, looking for a latch. 

He found it, and he checked on Sybil, hoping against hope, but gonnes were entirely too efficient at killing. Vimes shut down, and he examined her body as he would examine any that he found on the job, because if he didn’t shut down and go numb, he would have been entirely insensate, tearing into the metal of the strange room, turning over every last thing trying to find hide or hair of the murderer and the kidnapper he’d seen and howling out his bereaved rage with an ear-splitting lament that would have made even a werewolf know fear.

Vimes wished Sergeant Littlebottom was here. He couldn’t tell when Sybil had died, because the body was very cold: cold kept bodies fresh. That was a principle the slaughter district made very good use of. She’d died of that one particular bullet-wound. She’d died in a struggle, which he knew because he had seen it, though he did check under her fingernails to see if perhaps she had snagged a scrap of that kidnapper’s outfit. He found nothing but perhaps some of the brimstone scent of the dragons she so loved. Vimes hesitated a moment, and he put her wedding ring in his pocket, vowing that he’d find her killer and find young Sam. He found that there was a wedding ring on his own hand. He didn’t remember putting it on; he usually eschewed rings, but he wasn’t about to take it off now. It seemed low profile enough not to be a hindrance in a fight.

Then Vimes examined the rest of the strange complex. He found more bodies. He found a strange device with glowing words over what looked like an imp-tech keyboard, and he assumed that the imp was hidden away behind the glass to provide the glowing letters. According to that device, he was in Vault 111, and the life support systems had failed, causing the other humans trapped in this ‘Vault’ to asphyxiate. Vimes wondered, why only humans? Why not dwarfs and trolls? They were also common races in Ankh-Morpork. Trolls wouldn’t have asphyxiated, though, and locking trolls in freezers would only have the effect of making them very smart.

And why was he in a skin-tight blue jumpsuit? Vimes touched his hand to his forehead, thinking. He’d been at a party, some idiot nobles had been playing a strange game that the wizard Ponder Stibbons and a few other idiots had designed as a simulation, and some bugger had gotten the game helmet and goggles down on his head. Vimes hated games. Now he seemed to be in a different place entirely. 

Vimes reflected that at least he knew one thing for certain: a wizard did it. Gods, but he hated wizards sometimes. They aspired not to break the laws of man, as any common criminal, but to break the laws of reality, and he had no jurisdiction over them.

More exploration turned up more questions and also some oversized cockroaches that resembled the magically-mutated insects that could sometimes be found in the areas around Unseen University and were sometimes called ‘thaum-buggies’. Vimes dealt with them easily. Looking at the corpses of the cockroaches, he reflected that they probably had enough meat on them to be something C.M.O.T. Dibbler might put on a stick and sell. He found a pair of security batons, which he took, and a strange syringe that looked like something the Watch’s Igor or Igorina might devise. 

Another imp-tech device told him, after much cursing and frustration, which was required to make it work, that the ‘Vault’ he was in represented a sort of experiment. Bombs had gone off, rendering much of the world uninhabited due to a sort of… high intensity wild magic field, was Vimes’s best interpretation of this ‘nuclear radiation’ that the file kept going on about. Due to the world being uninhabitable, as an experiment, some humans had been frozen in those pods so that they wouldn’t use up any food or other resources while the Vault staff then waited for the all-clear signal that the high magic fields had subsided and it was safe to come out to resettle the Disc. As it turned out, the Vault staff had gone stir-crazy over the course of months and had mutinied and left.

More thaum-buggies; another imp-terminal with something about a ‘Red Menace’, which seemed to be calumnious anti-Agatean sentiment; and then Vimes found the skeleton of what seemed to be a dead wizard. There was an odd imp-tech device on the wizard’s arm, which Vimes examined. He searched the body, ultimately concluding that the man had been murdered, likely by the mutinying Vault staff. Gods, but he couldn’t exit one building without finding multiple murders. People frequently depressed Sam Vimes, though they did not surprise him. 

He strapped the imp-tech device, which seemed to be properly called a ‘Pip-Boy 3000 Mark IV’, onto his arm as evidence after he realized that he couldn’t unlock the door without it, and Sam Vimes headed out of the building and into the harsh sun.

Sam Vimes travelled for hours through the woods in what seemed to be the shattered remains of a strange civilization he had never heard of, but then, the Disc was full of those. He’d lost track of how many drunk and disorderlies he’d taken in to go cool off in a jail cell, ranting the whole time about how they were the last survivor of a lost empire. ‘Sure you are, bud, but your fist still found Mr. Beale’s face, didn’t it?’

Nothing seemed alive but the plants, and them only barely; and a few animals, but there weren’t as many animals as he expected. It made Sam Vimes feel suspicious, more so than his baseline levels. Perhaps there was a predator in the area, aside from him. He found a ruined neighbourhood built with unfamiliar construction techniques and made a thorough search of it over the span of more hours.

Eventually, he sighted a very peculiar squid-like flying golem in the distance, still moving, and Sam Vimes walked up to approach it. The metal golem seemed all at once shocked, happy, and awed to see him. It enthused, “As I live and breathe…” Vimes observed that the golem was doing neither. “It's... it's REALLY you! Just tending the garden, sir. Though it is hard to be a green thumb when you lack the requisite digit, I'm afraid.”

Who did the golem think he was supposed to be? Vimes was sure he’d never met the golem in his entire life. He gestured vaguely and asked cautiously, “What happened.... to the world?”

Maybe the wizards had just teleported him somewhere weird, and then he and Sybil and young Sam had been forced into those bloody pods and… no, he really didn’t know enough to speculate, not yet. Also, the golem was making him think of Willikins, and he wasn’t sure why.

The golem seemed happy to explain, “The world, sir? Well, besides our geraniums still being the envy of Sanctuary Hills, I'm afraid things have been dreadfully dull around here. Things will be so much more exciting with you and missus back! Where is your better half, by the by?”

Item one: he was in Sanctuary Hills, wherever that was. Item two: the golem expected him to have a wife. Maybe the golem had just noticed his wedding ring? Vimes decided to bite and said, “My wife was murdered in front of me. Don’t suppose you’d know anything about that?”

The golem somehow managed to looked horrified. “Sir... these things you're saying. These... terrible things... I... I believe you need a distraction. Yes! A distraction, to calm this dire mood. It's been ages since we've had a proper family activity. Checkers. Or perhaps charades. Young Sam does so love that game. Is the lad... with you...?”

‘Dire mood’ didn’t begin to cover it. Vimes grabbed the golem and shook him, demanding, “How do you know about my son?”

The golem sighed, “It's worse than I thought. Hmm hmm. You're suffering from... hunger-induced paranoia. Not eating properly for 200 years will do that, I'm afraid.”

Vimes kept shaking the golem for a moment and then snapped out of it. “200 years? I was frozen for 200 years? That’s bloody fair folk nonsense!” Vimes didn’t read fairy tales, but if he did, those would not be the ones he read. Still, he had the vague concept that sometimes, one would go dancing with the fair folk and come back 100 years older over the course of one night. Or not come back at all. That seemed likelier, really.

The golem continued, “A bit over 210 actually, sir. Give or take a little for the Earth's rotation and some minor dings to the ole' chronometer. That means you're two centuries late for dinner! Ha ha ha. Perhaps I can whip you up a snack? You must be famished.”

The golem said ‘the Earth’ like a sensible being would say ‘the Disc’. Sanctuary Hills, on Earth. It was a start. Vimes sighed, “What? No! I need help finding young Sam, not food!”

The golem suggested brightly, “Let's search the neighborhood together. After all, the missus and young Sam. They're... they're my family too.”

“I already looked. They're not here,” Vimes said, looking back over the ruined buildings. He knew where Sybil was, and he touched her ring in his pocket. Long across the black desert by now, he thought.

Remarkably, the golem started to cry or at least make the requisite sounds. “Then... they're really gone, aren't they? Oh sir…”

It was so odd to see someone he knew that he didn’t know be so broken up over his own personal loss. Vimes stood there, feeling awkward. “Can you tell me more about what happened?” He gestured vaguely.

The golem eventually stopped sniffling. “I'm afraid I don't know anything, sir. The bombs came, and all of you left in such a hurry. I thought for certain you and your family were... dead. I did find this holotape. I believe the missus was going to present it to you. As a surprise. But then, well... everything ‘happened.’”

Those would be those magic bombs that had caused this high magic ‘radiation’? Vimes took the rectangular object and asked, “What’s a holotape?”

“I believe it's a private message for you,” the golem explained, “My etiquette protocols would not permit me to play it for myself. Any standard holotape reading device should be able to play it back. Oh, like that Pip-Boy on your arm. That should work brilliantly.”

Vimes put the holotape away. He’d deal with it later. “Now, all the time you were here. Did you see anyone? Anyone at all coming out of the Vault?”

The golem crossed some of his appendages and looked sad. “If only I had, sir! You've no idea the desperation for human contact one develops over 200 years. And when you do encounter them? Oh the cruelty! You're either... target practice or... spare parts! But please, sir, don't tell me young Sam met the same fate as the missus. I... I don't know if the old nuts and bolts could take it.”

Sam continued to be baffled that a golem that he had just met was acting like he knew the Vimes family. He said firmly and coldly, “He's been kidnapped. I'm going to find him.”

Upon gentle questioning of the strange golem with, “Er, remind me of your name?” the golem had cheerily supplied that he was, “Codsworth, sir, the pride of General Atomics International!” 

The golem suggested he try Concord, assuring Sam that the locals there had only a little bit pummeled him with sticks before he had to run back home. Sounded like the nicer outskirts of the Shades. Codsworth himself wanted to check Sanctuary Hills just one last time, hoping against hope.

Day turned to night during the trip to Concord. Vimes could see in the dark, courtesy of the unwanted rider in his head; the night was no impediment to his travel. The last vestiges of the cold lurking in his bones and the uneven terrain and the eighth time he almost twisted an ankle trying to clamber over twisted, bleached roots, forced him to finally have a lie down. Sybil would have wanted him to have a lie down. She’d always fretted so over his health, and if anyone was going to die an untimely death, it should have been him, not her. Sam ended up sleeping under unfamiliar stars, which he hated on multiple levels. Sam Vimes was a city boy, born and bred, and he distrusted the wild on general principles. There could be gorillas, he was sure, although Codsworth had told him that gorillas were not native to the Commonwealth, which seemed to be the general name of the city-state in which they were. At least when he had been in Borogravia, before they had taken the Keep while dressed as washerwomen, there had been tents. Gods, what was wrong with him, that he was missing _Borogravia_?

Sybil had been alive when Sam Vimes was in Borogravia.

The unfamiliar stars were too bright and clear, not like the stars of Ankh-Morpork, half-shrouded by haze and light pollution. When he was younger, Sam Vimes had heard that one of the many religions of the Disc believed that those who in their lifetimes were good would become angels after death, afraid and alone, and that they must cling to the stars, very tightly, so that they wouldn’t fall from the sky. He gave thanks to the fact that he wasn’t particularly good. Staring at those too-clear stars, he knew that he didn’t want to be an angel. The angels might rise up, rise up, but they had a long way to fall.

Before he fell asleep, Vimes figured out how to slot the holotape into the Pip-Boy. Holotapes seemed to be like Cubes, although they were much more common and probably less expensive as a result. There was Sybil’s voice again. There was young Sam giggling in the background. It was like one of those imp recordings, wasn’t it? Only it couldn’t be, because the words were all wrong. Sybil had never been a lawyer, one of those minions of Mr. Slant. What was the purpose of haunting him with a fake message from his dead wife that didn’t even make sense? Vimes ripped it out of the Pip-Boy, and he heard the little metal cartridge crack in his hand as he trembled with sick anger. Then desperation took him, because he wanted to hear her voice again, even if the words were all wrong, and he gingerly slotted it back into the Pip-Boy, hoping wildly that it would still play. It did, and the wrong words from the right voice rattled in his head, a ghost pulling his chain rather than rattling chains.

* * *

Sleep was not refreshing. Alone, he reviewed his heading to Concord on his Pip-Boy, and he thought about what he knew, or what he thought he knew, which was less useful and more dangerous than actually knowing. Sam Vimes’s current running theory was not only that a wizard had done it, but that those wizards had restarted the Mage Wars, blown the Disc back into the Slood Age, and while the apocalypse had been going down, someone had dragged Vimes and family away from that bloody party and to questionable safety in those cryogenic pods and then set Codsworth on them to guard them for - reasons? He was unclear on that - and then… well, he couldn’t explain why he didn’t know any of the other corpses in the Vault. But the wizards, they must have gone and done it and restarted the Mage Wars. It was the only way to explain the sheer tandem devastation and weirdness. He wondered why - maybe the Bugarup University sorts had defeated Unseen University at a game of foot-the-ball, couches had been burned, tensions had flared and -

Yes, indeed, Sam Vimes thought that those bastards, those maniacs, had blown it all up.

Along the way, he found a building called the ‘Red Rocket Truck Stop’, and there, he found a dog that seemed to have been waiting for him, which Sam Vimes distrusted immensely. It wasn’t like when an ape was sent to find him. Sure, dogs seemed respectable enough, but the line between them and werewolves was very, very thin. With apes, a man knew where he stood. Just don’t call them monkeys. With the thought that he might be walking into a trap, Sam followed the dog, anyway.

In Concord, barbarians attacked the poor dog outside something called the Museum of Freedom, and Sam Vimes deftly countered with his baton when his words failed to stay their violence, but the problem was, they did not submit. Sometimes, he could get their weapons out of their hands, but disarming seemed to be more difficult than it should have been, and even disarmed, their hands went for his neck. Vimes cried out, “Stand down! You’re under arrest!”

The barbarians just laughed at him, like he’d said he was going to do something plainly ridiculous, like offer them up to the Soul Cake Duck. Vimes took out the one trying to strangle him with a low and dirty baton strike just under her ribs, and the barbarian, a young woman, went down, blood trickling from her lips. She twitched a bit, but when they were all down, he checked and felt her pulse flag, fade, and finish. 

Sam had killed a woman. She’d been trying to kill him, but all the same, he thought he was better at non-lethal takedowns than that. He checked the other barbarians that he had felled in front of the Museum and found them all dead. Sam examined the baton, frowning to himself. It seemed, on balance, to be a perfectly normal baton, even if he didn’t know the specific style. The weighting felt appropriate. Sam granted that he might have accidentally ruptured the one barbarian woman’s spleen - spleens were wibbly, wobbly sacks of blood that burst into furious hemorrhage if one so much looked at them wrong, a sort of cruel joke the Creator had played upon life, but he could not, for the life of him, figure out how he’d cracked a man’s spine through and through at an alarming angle with the baton, and it had meant the death of the other man.

Vimes played out the statement in his head, as if he were explaining it to Carrot, ‘Well, Captain, I really can’t figure out how I could have killed him, it was just a baton…’ No, Vimes wouldn’t have believed that, either.

His self-recriminating thoughts were interrupted by a young man’s voice calling, “Hey, up here! On the balcony! I've got a group of settlers inside! The raiders are almost through the door! Grab that laser musket and help us! Please!”

On the balcony, the young man, dark as if he were from Howandaland or certain parts of Klatch, was dressed similarly to a man who had been dead on the ground before Vimes had arrived. The ‘laser musket’ on the dead soldier appeared to be a gonne. There was absolutely no way that Vimes was going to touch it, not after he’d unintentionally used excessive force with a mere baton of a level that should have necessitated a very exhaustive and uncomfortable investigation. He’d almost lost himself to a gonne once. The weapon had felt too good in his hand; had fit just like a bottle of whiskey. 

Vimes went inside the dilapidated old Museum of Freedom, nothing at all like the Royal Art Museum, though it also purported to contain intangible concepts on display. In fact, the museum contained more barbarians - er - raiders, who attacked him with no provocation at all and did not respond in the slightest to pleas of, “Stand down, I don’t want to hurt you!”

He really didn’t want to hurt them, but they very much did want to hurt him, and no matter how careful he was, Sam was unable to knock them out or get their hands and tie them up or force them to surrender. They always died, and Sam laughed hysterically to himself. He was having a nightmare, and it had started when Sybil died. Vimes could have borne the freezing cold, but oh, something had snapped inside him when she died, snapped just like the neck of the raider dead at his feet had snapped. The Summoning Dark laughed, not with but at him, and purred, _They had it coming. They had you coming. You’ll see._

The raiders did shout horrible things, such as, “I’m coming in there, and I’m going to skin every last one of you.”

Vimes had seen crimes like that. He just didn’t see them often or on such a large scale. It was all so much, and it made him unreasoning in his anger, which, he reminded himself, was not a valid excuse for the blood that splattered and soaked the baton. As he felled one raider, another yelled, “You killed him!”

Sam wondered who it was he’d killed. Someone’s son, certainly, possibly another father, like himself, who would never come home to read to his child - but now the speaker was also dead, and Sam couldn’t spare much time to look at his hands, which shook, as they’d used to shake in the morning when he needed a drink more than he needed his own blood, because someone else was trying to kill him.

He could hear the young soldier he’d seen before shout encouragement: “Come on! Inside!” 

Wearily, Sam followed the sound of the voice, and he found the young soldier standing guard over a group of clear civilians, both young and elderly. Looking tremendously relieved, the man greeted, “Man, I don't know who you are, but your timing's impeccable. Preston Garvey, Commonwealth Minutemen.”

Vimes inquired, “Minutemen?” At least between the Pip-Boy and Codsworth, he had a vague idea of what the Commonwealth was.

Preston looked deflated. “Protect the people at a minute's notice. That was the idea. So I joined up, wanted to make a difference. And I did, but... things fell apart. Now it looks like I'm the last Minuteman left standing.”

Protecting the people seemed like a good idea. His own family motto had turned out to translate as, “I Protect and Serve”. The civilians arrayed in the room did indeed seem to be in need of protection, given the ferocity of the local raiders. However, Preston made it sound like the Minutemen weren’t doing so well. Feeling faintly guilty over just about everything, Vimes said, “Ah, Codsworth suggested that I come to Concord to ask for help finding my missing boy, but I see… you have your own problems.” 

He shifted uncomfortably, trying to think what sort of charge sheet Carrot would have written up for him. There were some Watchmen who would have just thrown up their hands and written ‘everything’, after that slaughter. Sam might have.

Preston agreed and proceeded to summarize his own problems as, “A month ago, there were 20 of us. Yesterday there were 8. Now, we're 5. First it was the ghouls in Lexington. Now this mess.”

Vimes was puzzled; most of the ghouls he was aware of went to Reg Shoe’s support group. He wondered if Reg Shoe had survived the apocalypse. The man had already died once; it would be a shame for him to have to do it over again. 

Preston went on wearily, “So… you don't know the half of it. Anyway, we figured Concord would be a safe place to settle. Those raiders proved us wrong. But... well, we do have one idea. Sturges? Tell him.”

Looking up from a misbehaving imp-tech box, the man who must be Sturges said, “There's a crashed vertibird up on the roof. Old school. Pre-war. You might've seen it.” Vimes wondered if a vertibird was anything like an exceptionally large wading bird. “Well, looks like one of its passengers left behind a seriously sweet goody. We're talking a full suit of cherry T-45 Power Armor. Military issue.”

Vimes asked, “What makes that magic armour so special?”

Sturges explained, almost rapturously, “A West Tek internalized servo-system, that's what. Inside that baby, super is the new normal. You'll be stronger, tougher, resistant to rads. And… Get the suit, you can rip the minigun right off the vertibird. Do that, and those Raiders get an express ticket to Hell. You dig?”

That sounded like the sort of magic armour that wizards had made in the old days, before the wizards had realized that the heroes they made it for would then turn around, while wearing the magic armour, and beat the wizards to death. The mention of the ‘minigun’ made Sam wince, but thinking about his growing collection of bruises - his neck was going to be purple for days where that woman had tried to strangle him - he supposed he could deal with some magic armour, if he had to, to protect these people. Preston was probably the prophesied hero or some such. All Vimes would have to do was go, get the armour, give it to Preston, and then he could be back on his way to finding young Sam. So he said weakly, “I guess I could go get that armour...”

“Only there's one hitch. The suit's out of juice. Probably been dry for a hundred years,” said Sturges, “It can be powered up again, but we're a bit stuck...”

Magic did run out, didn’t it? Sam felt like he was being sent to the store, and he sighed, “So you want the armour, the… minigun,” ‘gun’ was said just a bit differently than ‘gonne’, but everyone had such a strange accent, a little like Fourecks, but more like nothing he’d ever heard; only Codsworth spoke like he could be from anywhere Sam Vimes had ever been, “...and a magic power source, that right?”

Sturges gave Sam a bit of a weird look over the mention of ‘’magic power source’ and said, “What you'll need is an old pre-war F.C., a standardized fusion core. Your high-grade, long-term nuclear battery. Used by the military and some companies, way back when. And we know right where to find one...”

Preston nodded and added, “A fusion core. It's kind of a fancy battery. They used one here in the museum to power the exhibits, a long time ago. There's one in the basement, behind a security gate. You'll need to pick the lock or hack the computer to open it.”

Vimes tilted his head to one side. To him, a computer was a stone circle, typically made by the druids of Llamedos, to assist with calculations of meteorology and other such things. He was deeply uncertain how hacking up a stone circle could open up a door; that smacked suspiciously of hidden temples and Heroes and booby traps. Lock-picking was, however, a thing Vimes could do, even if all he had on him was a collection of hair pins. He missed the well-used set of lockpicks that he’d had before - before the end of the world, he supposed. So Vimes didn’t ask for more clarification and instead headed off for the basement.

As he left, an old woman who seemed suspiciously witchy, commented, “You're not what I expected Dogmeat would find in that little neighborhood. But oh, so much better.”

Dogmeat was the dog’s name? There was good eating on a dog, Vimes supposed.

Blissfully, he did not need to fight anyone else on the trek down to the basement. The baton stayed at his hip and brought no harm to anyone. Vimes found the lock easily enough, but he didn’t see any stone circles anywhere in the basement, not even a knee top. Where was the computer they’d mentioned? The lock was odd, but with a little experimentation, he was able to get it open. Once he had the fusion core, a little metal and yellow device, possibly even a Device in the dwarfen fashion, he headed off to find the Power Armour.

Along the way, he found another holotape. This Power Armour had belonged to United States Army Staff Sergeant Michael Daly, apparently. Sam Vimes had never heard of the United States, but there were many places on the Disc he had never heard of. There were parts of Ankh-Morpork that hadn’t heard of their own arse, for that matter. (Sometimes, they needed it shown to them, with a well-placed boot). Nuclear detonation? Global event? Vimes hazily recalled Lady Regina Rust’s stated desire to ‘nuke’ the first settlement she came across. 

The Power Armour was on the roof, and Vimes slotted the fusion core in the back of it to make it go. It opened up for him; there was no need for a squire in donning this armour, but Vimes felt terribly uneasy about just climbing inside. What if it never opened again? It didn’t look like he could just carry it back to Preston, though. Swallowing his distaste, he grabbed the minigun, whose name was a plain, bald-faced lie. There was nothing mini about that gun. It was, at the very least, a macrogun.

Then Vimes tromped back to Preston and tried to get him to take the armour and the minigun and go do his clear Fabled Hero duties. What Preston said upon seeing Vimes in the Power Armour was, though, “Well all right. Maybe our luck's finally turning around. Once you, that Power Armor, and that minigun show up outside, those Raiders'll know they picked the wrong fight. Good luck.”

Vimes stared at him wordlessly. He was a random man off the street and covered in blood that wasn’t his own. He looked like the sort of person that he had arrested for a living. Preston was trusting him to save these people Preston was protecting? Then Preston was a _fool_ , and fools were not to be bloody trusted with magic armour and ‘miniguns’ - _mini_ his arse. Fools, however, still deserved to live, and if saving these cowering people from their young leader’s trusting naivety was the job put in front of Vimes this morning…

The minigun was more like a siege weapon, anyway, wasn’t it? Like Detritus’s Piecemaker. Someone would need to be a troll to lift the minigun, or have a set of Power Armour, as Vimes currently did. Miniguns weren’t going to end up in the hands of common street criminals and be used to gun down unsuspecting victims…

Sam told himself those lies, and he hated himself the whole time while he thought those lies even more than he hated how the Summoning Dark laughed in his head. Even with the Power Armour, the minigun felt disturbingly good in his hands, so comfortable, as if it had always belonged there. Sam tried to imagine clearing the streets of raiders another way, though, with only Preston’s sad little group. So maybe if they set up a barricade and they snuck into the raider camp and replaced the raiders’ water with alcohol and...

No, there was no time. Sam caught a raider trying to rush in the door of the Museum of Freedom and another three shooting him from afar, staggering him back even despite the Power Armour. Pulling the trigger was easy on the minigun; he just hoped that he’d be able to stop.

Aside from waves and waves of raiders, who all wanted to die rather than stand down or flee or do anything at all that anyone with any common sense might do, there was something else moving in or under the city, something subterranean that shook the street, that he could feel even through the Power Armour. Something burst out from under the ground, and a bellow split the air, and the raiders showed the fear that they didn’t have the courtesy to show to Sam. He saw glimpses of the creature through ancient, dirty windows and blasted out buildings, something that moved and flowed like a noble dragon, though it was smaller and lacked wings.

Sybil would have tried to tame it.

Sam ended it, the minigun hot in his hand, a warning. The streets were still for a moment, as the blood of raiders oozed warm and sticky on the cracked asphalt. He stood over the body of the creature. It had stood on two legs, but not like a man, counterbalanced by a tail like an alligator’s, with arms that ended with great rending claws. The curled horns looked like how Vimes had once fancied demons’ horns might.

Now, if he wanted to see a demon, all he had to do was look in the mirror.

Back in the Museum of Freedom, Preston looked at Sam with more than a little shock and said, “That was... a pretty amazing display. I'm just glad you're on our side.”

“I am?” Sam asked absently. He was trying to drop the hot, hot minigun that his hands were still clutching, quite against both his will and his better sense. Gods, but the minigun had made it all so _easy_. Why should he have to strain himself? He was, after all, protecting and serving the people.

Preston did not seem to quite know what to say to Sam’s ambiguous and somewhat ominous comment, and he suggested, with equal parts nervousness and hope, “You should come with us to Sanctuary. We could use the help.”

Sam needed to go find young Sam. He didn’t know how long he’d been asleep in the ice. He had no idea how many six o’clocks he’d missed, and right now, he was a mess of bad reasons. That railway caper with the Patrician had only been the start of it. Certainly, Vimes was concerned about the ability of this ragtag little group to safely make it across the street, let alone to this ‘Sanctuary’, wherever it was. _Any relation to Sanctuary Hills?_ he wondered to himself. Helping these poor people make it anywhere was, nonetheless, a bad reason, and he was a bad man who still hadn’t managed to drop the minigun, so he agreed to it.

The witchy woman, who was called Mama Murphy, said, “Before you leave, kid. A word. About the journey you're about to start on. 'Cause I've seen your destiny, and I know your pain.”

There weren’t many people who could get away with calling Sam Vimes ‘kid’, but if anyone was entitled to, a witch was. He let it pass with a grunt. Destiny was for chosen ones, not tired old men like him who just wanted their sons back.

She continued, “You're a man out of time. Out of hope. But all's not lost. I can feel... your son's energy. He's alive.”

Vimes finally dropped the minigun. He went down on one knee, took her hands, leaned in, and begged, “Where is my son? Where is young Sam?”

Mama Murphy looked as close to apologetic as a witch could, which wasn’t very, and she admitted, “Oh, I wish I knew, kid. I really do. But it's not like I can see your son. I can just... feel his life force, his energy. He's out there. And even I don't need the Sight to tell you where you should start lookin'. The great, green jewel of the Commonwealth. Diamond City. The biggest settlement around.”

Vimes’s heart sunk, and for a moment, he curled over in the Power Armour, his helmet touching the floor. His boy was out there, and Vimes wasn’t with him, and he’d missed untold six’o’clocks, and here he was, making bad excuses. But at least he was alive! Gods, young Sam was still alive! For now. And he had a lead! Diamond City! Vimes fiddled with his Pip-Boy, although the device didn’t seem to know where Diamond City was. He looked back up and pleaded, “Diamond City? Where’s Diamond City?”

_Wasn’t Diamond City in Genua?_ he thought hazily. His grasp on non-Ankh-Morpork geography was always shaky, at best. Didn’t Genua have chameleon alligators? Did he have to be on the lookout for those?

Mama Murphy looked pained as she admitted, “Look, kid, I'm tired now. Maybe you bring me some chems later, the Sight will paint a clearer picture.”

Preston scolded, as if there was a long-standing argument between him and Mama Murphy, “No! Mama Murphy, we talked about this. That junk... it's gonna kill you...”

Mama Murphy was stern as only a witch could be as she said, “Oh shush, Preston. We're all gonna die eventually. We're gonna need the Sight. And our new friend here, he's gonna need it too. Now let's get goin'. Sanctuary awaits.”

Preston turned to the beleaguered assemblage and called out, “Alright folks. Thanks to our friend here, it's safe to move out.”

Sam watched people, and as he trudged to Sanctuary, which in fact was the same thing as Sanctuary Hills, with the ragtag survivors he told himself another bad reason why he was doing this: that Preston looked too shaken and depressed to be trusted with the lives of so many. Preston might be a fool, but he was also clearly rattled, quite possibly by his recent string of bad luck. 

Sam wanted to hide the Power Armour in the Red Rocket Truck Stop, but it ran out of magic twenty feet from the garage, so he pulled out the spent fusion core and continued the rest of the journey on foot. As he glanced over the armour, he noted that some of the outer layers, damaged as they’d been in the fight, had fallen off during the trip back to the truck stop. He wasn’t quite sure where on the road he’d lost those chunks of metal. He was a natural pedestrian, in any case, and he was glad enough to be out of that tin can death trap.

In putting away the empty fusion core, Sam started to notice, though, that his backpack seemed to be the sort of item one would purchase at one of those hole-in-the-wall stores that weren’t there when you came back later, which some called tabernae vagantes. There was a limit to how much the backpack could hold, but it seemed to be much larger inside than it was outside, and it allowed Sam to carry a frankly unreasonable amount of kit before he had to slow down his walking pace.

Arriving at Sanctuary seemed to buoy Preston with new hope. He looked around at the decaying old buildings with wonder. “I should have listened to Mama Murphy all along. Pretty nice place she's found for us. I think we could settle down here, make it a place to call home. What do you think?”

“I think _you_ could,” Sam said archly. He wasn’t settling anywhere. He was going to go find young Sam. He pushed past Preston, and he sought out where Mama Murphy was settling in.

Preston added, “I've had word from a settlement that needs help. They're still hoping there are Minutemen out there somewhere. The only chance to start rebuilding the Minutemen is to show people that they can count on us when they need us. Trouble is, I've got my hands full here. Do you think you can help out with the settlement?”

Sam paused and pinched the bridge of his nose. Could he really leave a whole settlement of people to die? And yet, it was another bad reason. He mumbled, “I’ll look into it if I run into it along my way.” His Pip-Boy beeped as it updated with the new location on its map.

Sam found Mama Murphy, and she looked at him with some amusement, commenting, “You're tied to this place, kid. Your energy.”

He sighed wearily. Mama Murphy didn’t have any crystals on her or heavy silver jewellery, but nonetheless, she seemed to be less on the side of the practical witches who could cure a child’s upset stomach with a fizzy drink and a good burping and more on the side of witches who felt that chakras, whatever they were, needed a good blitzing, whatever that was. Still, she was the only lead he had. “I’ll get myself untied. I have my son to find,” _and_ , he added silently, _my wife to avenge_.

“I saw you leave that ice box. I know your pain. This world, it's not yours, but here you are. The Sight can help you, kid. It always has answers. Just gotta bring me some Jet, so I can see what it wants to tell you,” said Mama Murphy.

Sam clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. He had _not_ mentioned anything about being frozen to any of them, nor had he mentioned how Codsworth seemed to think that Sam was, in fact, from this very neighbourhood. Codsworth… he’d have to check on how the old golem was doing, now that he had a lead. Sam rummaged through his somewhat occult backpack and pulled out several odd items that he had picked up during his travels. “Any of these it?”

“Like a little kick yourself, huh?” She picked out a weird little device with a mouthpiece and reservoir. “This'll do. Now let me ride the high to where the Sight wants to take me.” Mama Murphy put her lips on the mouthpiece, pressed in the reservoir, and inhaled deeply.

A little light clicked on in Vimes’s head. _Oh_. Jet - chems - they were _drugs_. That was what Preston had been nagging Mama Murphy about! And surely, no one was going to deny a witch some Jolly Sailor Tobacco, but drugs… were complicated. On the job, Vimes mostly encountered troll drugs, because the Patrician only bothered to outlaw drugs that were particularly likely to cause violence and death, and troll drugs usually did both. There were a few human drugs that the Patrician had banned; the Watch had confiscated a big batch of Love Potion Number 5 a month ago, which had nothing to do with love and was rather more sordid in a way that made Vimes’s fists curl with rage. Vimes couldn’t say what it was Jet did; he certainly wasn’t going to take any on his own. He knew his… flaws.

For Mama Murphy, though, it seemed to give her a vision, and she spoke, “Diamond City holds answers, but they're locked tight. You ask them what they know, but people's hearts are chained up with fear and suspicion. But you find it. You find that heart that's gonna lead you to your boy. Oh, it's... it's bright. So bright against the dark alleys it walks. That's... that's what you need to do, kid. Follow the signs to the bright heart. Whew... wow... that... took more out of me than usual. I'm gonna need to rest now, kid.”

Mama Murphy sank down and seemed to diminish. Vimes watched her, somber, and he thought to himself that, witch or no witch, he wouldn’t be giving her any more chems, if she did ask him.

* * *

Codsworth was easily convinced to come with Vimes on his trip to Diamond City, and Dogmeat seemed content to stay in Sanctuary to be fawned upon by Preston’s people, most of whom were eager to pet the very good boy. The way to Diamond City found Vimes faced off against monsters, only some of which were not human.

Vimes was walking on a raised road that bridged, allowing another road to run beneath it. Beneath him, he heard raiders demanding money from farmers, who protested they didn’t have any. Raiders weren’t the Thieves’ Guild, which at least regulated its own excesses, Vimes was forced to admit. As he leapt over the side of the overpass, baton in hand, the sound of gunfire rang out. When he landed, he saw to the dismay of his stomach that the farmers were already dead on the ground. The raiders seemed quite eager to have him join the farmers in death. Vimes cursed himself for being too slow to save those poor sods. Sam cursed himself for the fact that when he laid the raiders down, he wasn’t able to merely lay them out. Codsworth didn’t seem to see anything wrong with it at all and considered it a rather exhilarating fight. Willikins would have known Vimses’s misgivings about excessive force. He closed the open, staring eyes of the farmers, the eyes that seemed to accuse, _Why didn’t you save us?_

_But you avenged them_ , the Summoning Dark said cheerily, in his head, in the shadows under the overpass.

“Tell it to their crops and the people relying on those farmers for their meals,” Sam mumbled, and he hoped that Codsworth didn’t hear him.

The golem gave no sign he’d heard. They continued their trek to Diamond City. The hours ground by. If not for the Pip-Boy and Codsworths’s occasional idiosyncratic comments and the intermittent battles with monsters, human and otherwise, Sam would have lost all sense of time. He had to go to Diamond City, and he had to find the glowing heart, something something bloody mystical whittle, and he’d find his boy. That was it. That was all. Perhaps night passed; perhaps many nights passed; he couldn’t say. Certainly, Codsworth nagged him about sleep; but sleep was a distant memory.

Eventually, Vimes entered into the ruins of an old city, as the wrecked buildings around him grew higher and denser. He’d seen better-looking cities in war-torn Borogravia. He passed by an old store and heard a woman calling for help. The dead farmers came immediately to mind, but as he followed the voice into the store, his cynical bastard second thoughts caught up with him and held him a moment. There, hidden in shadow, he overheard raiders planning to ambush him.

His second thoughts gloated smugly at his first thoughts, and his battered and bruised and bleeding soul sorrowed for what had become of the world. Sam went through the store and into the warehouse attached to the back; there was no injured woman who needed his help, but he caused plenty of injuries himself. And for what? Yes, he’d heard them plotting to ambush him, and Vimes could have easily had them on conspiracy charges, but that hardly justified killing them, he berated himself…

Then Sam found a hole into the basement, and he found the pile of stripped-naked corpses, looted, every last one of them. Perhaps more had been done to those poor souls before or after they’d died, although he didn’t have the sort of forensics kit on him to check. Vimes felt ill, sickened by humanity, for all that Codsworth and the Pip-Boy kept fretting about radiation. These raiders would have ambushed him and added his corpse to the pile. They would have kept him from his boy. His heart froze, though it kept beating, and he gripped the baton.

Watchman, judge, jury, executioner. To be one was more than enough of a job for any one man. Sam stalked back up into abandoned store, now still, now lifeless. It was so easy to see the murder victims in the basement and to judge his own victims, to tell himself they’d had it coming. Vimes reminded himself that he couldn’t do that. His lot was to watch, not to judge; to protect, not to execute.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slyjinks: So a couple of fun things here concerning that suit of power armor: I play Fallout 4 with the Sim Settlements mod enabled because I absolutely hate settlement building quests and would just as soon let the NPCs handle that themselves (from an in-character perspective, that makes a hell of a lot more sense than Sam Vimes setting up a freaking radio beacon or whatever, anyway). Unfortunately, I dropped the broken chunks of that initial suit of power armor off in a random container in Sanctuary and then put Codsworth in charge of the Settlement. He built it up, things got re-arranged, and I NEVER FOUND THOSE PARTS AGAIN. They were probably moved to the workstation or something, but I was still figuring my way around, so... no complete initial set of power armor for me!
> 
> A second note is that I really did run out of fusion core juice about 15 yards from the Red Rocket. I don't even know what I'd been doing that had run through it that badly, but I used it for an in-character perspective of, "The magic power cans that make the magic armor work run out a lot, so you need a whole lot if you're going a long way."
> 
> **We love comments of all lengths, and understand the need for low-energy commenting like kudos. If you ever find yourself wanting to give us additional kudos, feel free to leave a comment of an icon or emoji of a heart!** <3


	2. An Unwelcome Visitor * Unlikely Valentine * Gamification * Policing 101

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter song: [Beauty Bleak](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_KEFGY-CPg&list=PLLEELrwJ-FyotucudE52BnFg6vVn1AGne&index=4&t=0s) by Miracle of Sound

**__** _An Unwelcome Visitor * Unlikely Valentine * Gamification * Policing 101_

Diamond City was much smaller than Ankh-Morpork, although every city that Vimes knew of on the Disc was much smaller than Ankh-Morpork. However, and perhaps it was just his Morpork1 showing, Vimes wouldn’t have even called Diamond City a city. It was, at best, a village, albeit a walled village. Outside the gate, there was a woman shouting to be let in. She was a dark-haired woman with a red leather cap, a red leather coat, a dingy scarf, fingerless gloves, and fairly sensible-looking boots, and she was shouting irately at a speaking box. Vimes watched a moment, trying to determine why the guard was giving her such a hard time. Keeping someone out took effort. Why was it worth the guard’s time to do so?

The guard sounded young, but these days, they all did, as he said, “I got orders not to let you in, Ms. Piper. I'm sorry. I'm just doing my job.”

Ms. Piper, as she was called, was sarcastic and indignant. Gesturing derisively, she snapped, “Just doing your job? Protecting Diamond City means keeping me out, is that it? ‘Oh look, it's the scary reporter!’ Boo!”

Vimes looked sidelong at Codsworth. Ms. Piper was a reporter, was she? That explained things, such as both the little card in her hat that said ‘press’ and why the guard wasn’t letting her in. Vimes didn’t like reporters much, maybe because they seemed to go out of the way to find the absolutely least flattering angles of his Watchmen to iconograph, like the angles where it looked like Detritus was carrying off a dwarf… which, to be fair, Detritus had been, but that dwarf had tried to assault one of his dwarfen officers! It was all a matter of context, and the framing of the shot that the _Times_ sometimes selected was often an awful lot like a different sort of framing. 

That guard up there on the wall was just a working stiff who had orders. Vimes had been there, oh yes, indeed. He thought dimly of those who used ‘only following orders’ as an excuse to follow bad orders, but he did not yet know if these orders were good or bad. If the orders weren’t bad, well, he’d happily used ‘just following orders’ as an excuse to cause some obstruction, if he felt obstruction was required.

The guard continued, and Vimes could tell the boy wasn’t getting paid enough for this, “I'm sorry, but Mayor McDonough's really steamed, Piper. Sayin' that article you wrote was all lies. The whole city's in a tizzy.”

Piper’s hands balled to fists, and she stamped with frustration. “Agh... you open this gate right now, Danny Sullivan! I live here. You can't just lock me out!”

Danny Sullivan. A working-class name, that one. Vimes, for a moment, imagined generations of Danny Sullivans standing on walls, keeping nosy reporters out of cities that were actually just villages.

Piper turned to him, and her voice turned conspiratorial, “You. You want into Diamond City, right?”

Vimes looked back over at Codsworth, who was no help, and he admitted, “Well, yes…” For young Sam, his boy, he supposed he could deal with a reporter.

Piper held up a hand, and her voice became low, conspiratorial. “Shh. Play along.” Then she turned back to the speaking box and said loudly, “What was that? You said you're a trader up from Quincy? You have enough supplies to keep the general store stocked? You hear that, Danny? You gonna open the gate and let us in? Or are you going to be the one talking to crazy Myrna about losing out on all this supply?”

Vimes crossed his arms. This was a terrible lie; Fred Colon would have let someone with that sort of lie in immediately. Then Nobby would have checked the ‘trader’s’ pockets, professionally, of course, and Nobby being Nobby, he probably would have found items enough to make anyone seem a trader.

Danny Sullivan, who was, as Vimes had surmised, not being paid enough for this, because they never were, acquiesced, “Geez, all right. No need to make it personal, Piper. Give me a minute.”

Piper looked pleased with herself in the smug way of a vampire, and she brushed off her hands and said, “Better head inside quick before ole' Danny catches on to the bluff.”

Nonetheless, the door opened up like the gate on a bridge, and while Piper complained of Vimes, “Not a talker, huh? Have it your way,” - _not to reporters, if I can avoid it_ \- a short, thick man in a rumpled tan suit and hat accused Piper, “You devious, rabble-rousing slanderer! The... the level of dishonesty in that paper of yours! I'll have that printer scrapped for parts.”

Vimes imagined that Piper’s dwarfs who ran and maintained her moveable type would object to that, likely with axes. 

“Oooh, that a statement, Mr. McDonough? ‘Tyrant mayor shuts down the press?’” Piper mocked. “Why don't we ask the newcomer? You support the news? 'Cause the mayor's threatening to throw free speech in the dumpster.”

“I suppose.” Vimes supposed that he supported the news, insofar as that he tried to buy the original of every political cartoon they ran of him, and his wife always beat it to him and hung it up. They had a whole gallery of them, now. Well, they had… 

Vimes had already noticed the guards standing about, armed with rifles; only now did the mayor notice _him_. If he’d been an Assassin, which he wouldn’t have been, on general principles, he could have taken out the mayor and been gone before those guards had their fingers on their triggers. _Sloppy_. 

The mayor sputtered, “Oh, I didn't mean to bring you into this argument, good sir. No no no... You look like Diamond City material.”

Vimes grinned manically. Did he, now? Splattered in blood and stinking of sweat? He looked to Codsworth and commented mildly, “My, what standards Diamond City has.”

The mayor held out his arms placatingly. “Welcome to the great green jewel of the Commonwealth. Safe. Happy. A fine place to come, spend your money, settle down. Don't let this muckraker here tell you otherwise, all right?”

“I’m sure I’d be settling,” said Vimes, who had a son to find, as he inflected that last word carefully. “Who would I talk to about a kidnapping?”

Not that Danny Sullivan, he was certain.

There was recognition on Piper’s face. Interesting. Unsurprising. She said, “Did you say kidnapped? Well, McDonough? Diamond City Security going to investigate this? How about all the other kidnapping reports you been ignoring?”

Keeping out reporters who, Vimes was grudgingly forced to admit, did indeed seem to live here, standing around uselessly as a complete unknown armed stranger with an even more heavily armed butler golem approached their mayor, ignoring kidnapping reports… Vimes had been here a few minutes, and already, he had a dim view of Diamond City Security.

The mayor huffed, “Don't listen to her. While I am afraid that our security team can't follow every case that comes through, I'm confident you can find help here.”

Can’t follow every case? And he wondered, did Diamond City Security follow any? Following a case was a way to catch up with it, and catching up with a case was a way to end up dead. Every guard had to think about that.

“Yeah? You got any names?” Sam said cynically. So far, what did he have? _Diamond City holds answers, but they're locked tight._ The gate was locked. _You ask them what they know, but people's hearts are chained up with fear and suspicion._ Given how the press was treated, that seemed to be true so far. _But you find it. You find that heart that's gonna lead you to your boy. Oh, it's... it's bright. So bright against the dark alleys it walks._ Well, that certainly was a bunch of mystic bunk, wasn’t it? But it had been right so far. He’d have to see if it could stick the landing.

McDonough was clearly reluctant to name any names, but after some hesitation, as if it had finally dawned upon him that there was, in fact an armed man with an armed golem butler standing very, very close to him and that none of his guards had their fingers on their triggers yet, he gave in and said, “Well, there is one private citizen. Nick Valentine. A... detective of sorts, who specializes in tracking people down. Usually for debts or whatnot. Now, I have to get going. I'm sorry Diamond City Security doesn't have time to help, but I'm sure Mister Valentine charges a reasonable fee.”

Vimes groaned inwardly. He didn’t like private eyes. Ankh-Morpork only had one, but that one, a former Watchman he’d kicked off the force for taking bribes, was one too many in his city for his liking. And a debt-hunter, too? Like those old country sheriffs that were inevitably pantsed by some thieving boy in a cowl? And _reasonable_ fees never were...

As McDonough hastily hurried away, Piper shouted, “This is ridiculous! Diamond City Security can't spare one officer to help? I want the truth, McDonough! What's the real reason security never investigates any kidnappings?”

As he left, the mayor threatened, “I've had enough of this, Piper. From now on, consider you and that little sister of yours on notice.”

Vimes took the Patrician’s security very seriously, for all of his misgivings. Now, he thought he understood why Diamond City Security seemed to be taking McDonough’s security not seriously at all, _not that it was any excuse_. The mayor openly threatened children around strangers? Vimes took a dim view of that, indeed, he did.

“Yeah, keep talkin', McDonough. That's all you're good for!” Piper called as he departed.

Vimes supposed that, as reporters went, Piper seemed fairly all right. She seemed to care about the missing people - _people_ , plural, not just his son - enough that she was frustrated that the establishment wouldn’t do anything about it. She seemed to want to hold the establishment accountable to… well, it didn’t seem there was anything to hold it accountable to, and that seemed a large part of the problem.

Piper then turned upon Vimes, fairly beaming. “I'm impressed, not everyone can claw information out of McDonough's tight-fisted hands. Hmm, why don't you stop by my office after you see Valentine? I think I just found my next story.”

Vimes clicked his tongue. He had just finished thinking how Piper seemed to be decent enough… for a reporter. That didn’t mean he wanted to stroll right into her lair. Now, with the mayor and the reporter gone, Vimes took a few moments to talk to the guards to verify that they were both useless and mismanaged and that those two things were, indeed, related. Some of them were hopeless, but some, perhaps Detritus could have whipped into a shape, maybe even the shape of a guard, if they were very unlucky. Perhaps the one in the dark sunglasses?

Detritus. Why had Vimes not seen lichen nor pebble of a troll at any point here? For that matter, he hadn’t seen any dwarfs, although, how else would Piper have a printing press? He hadn’t seen anything other than humans and golems and those poor zombie-like sods that Preston had called ‘ghouls’, so far, no medusas, no vampires, no gnomes, no gnolls, no gargoyles…

There was a man hawking ‘splatters’, which, to listen to his sales pitch, appeared to be cricket bats with all the tradition and regulation stripped out and replaced with depressing brutality. A part of Vimes that he was being very careful not to feed right now became rather excited by the prospect, and he found himself handing the man some bottlecaps in exchange for a splatter, which inexplicably fit inside his backpack.

They used bottlecaps as currency, here. He supposed he couldn’t talk; Ankh-Morpork used coins, paper money, and _stamps_. It had all made sense, at the time. 

He passed by a bum who looked like an addict with the shakes, moaning, “So thirsty... Doctor says I can't drink liquor no more... Cola... Need a Nuka-Cola...”

Sam wouldn’t have been shocked if the man was faking. Queen Molly’s beggars had always been very good at their chosen professions. But, faking it or not, Sam knew what it was to trade an addiction to booze for another addiction. His tilted his head to one side and asked, “You’ve traded booze for pop, is it that?”

The man whimpered, “Dugout Inn usually has some... but I can't go there... can't be around booze... Doctor says I can't drink that...”

“Y’know, we used to have support groups for this…” Sam said shaking his head, and he looked through his backpack. He found a Nuka-Cola, still cold. Why was it still cold? Blasted wizards and their magic. He handed the bottle to the beggar. If he was faking it, it was a Nuka-Cola well-earned. If he wasn’t, then as one boozer to another, Sam knew what it was to nurse a silly fizzy drink while everyone else hit the Bearhugger’s and the beer. But not the bear2.

The beggar looked convincingly surprised as he gratefully accepted the Nuka-Cola and effused, “Oh thank you! Thank you!”

Sam shook his head and walked off. The village wasn’t hard to walk a map of into his head, even if the soles of his boots were thicker than he would have preferred. Vimes wondered what this Nick Valentine had done that was so egregious that he couldn’t even be a pathetic Diamond City Security Guard. Maybe he was better off just looking for young Sam on his own. That reasonable fee was going to be anything but, he was sure. Reasonable fees were their own oxymorons. 

On the north side of the city, in an alley that was perpetually at least a bit dark at any time of day due to the covered walkway and the way the buildings had been constructed and angled, there was a pink magic sign. There had been a time in his life when Vimes had frequently found himself down in a gutter under a pink magic sign. Those signs weren’t popular, these days, but trends came and went. Then there had been a dragon, and Vimes had been just a bit too busy to drink his dinner…

_You find that heart that's gonna lead you to your boy. Oh, it's... it's bright. So bright against the dark alleys it walks. That's... that's what you need to do, kid. Follow the signs to the bright heart._

“Well, bugger,” said Vimes, staring accusingly at the pink magic sign of ‘Valentine Detective Agency’, complete with a bright heart with an arrow through it.

1 A sort of small owl.  
2 Bear-fighting was illegal. No one had told Ridcully. 

* * *

The reporters had come and gone. Two Watchmen, one Sergeant Littlebottom and one Constable Igorina, had also stopped by and questioned Ponder on when they could expect him to have their Commander out of Hex, to which he still did not have a good answer, although those two Watchmen, one a lady dwarf who had grown a much better beard than Ponder had ever been able to manage and the other an Igorina, had very excellent questions. His students were busy on what they said was homework and what he hoped was not getting Rascally Drunk instead. So Ponder was alone with Hex when someone who managed to belong less in the Unseen University High Magic Building than Sergeant Littlebottom slipped into the laboratory space behind him. 

She was a rather imposing woman in an embroidered black-red velvet dress with white lace like snow over blood and an excessive amount of diamonds glittering around her neck, her dark red-brown hair piled high on her head, lips red and peeled back in a thoroughly unpleasant smile. Ponder had maybe seen her somewhere before, when wizarding events overlapped with high society events, as they sometimes did, but terrifyingly beautiful women were of little interest to him, and he was of even less interest to them. So he couldn’t put a name to the face. He said, “Er. What are you doing in here?”

“Now, is that any way for you to introduce yourself to a lady, Mr. Stibbons?” she asked.

“I wasn’t introducing myself,” Ponder corrected, because he wasn’t.

She glared at him, like the high-beam lanterns used by the Mail Coaches on the open, empty roads in the foggy nights. “I am Lady Regina Rust.”

“Fine. Why are you here?” said Ponder. He was a wizard, and even if he was a wizard who occasionally suffered from Imposter Syndrome because he’d once passed a test simply by putting his name on it and he still couldn't manage to grow a beard, he was yet a wizard. That set him apart from the rest of mundane society. Her being a fine lady who could afford to encrust herself in diamonds and lace knit by forsaken children did not impress Ponder. It just bewildered him that she was here. Was she lost?

Rust tried to scathe at him, but Ponder had been scathed by far better than her, including the old wizard Fettle Dodgast, back when he was a student, so the scathe just bounced off and richochected aimlessly across the room where it lodged in one of the chairs and would make an amusing noise when next someone sat there. “I am Lady Regina Rust, and you have that uppity Sam Vimes trapped in that cunning machine of yours?”

“‘Trapped’ would be both inaccurate and misleading,” Ponder said reproachfully. “However, his morphic field currently exists as pure narrativium within a simulated world designed for exploring the aftermath of an equivalent of the Mage Wars, only lacking the magic, while we try to discern a method to transpose the pure narrativium back into an appropriate mixture of thaumium, deitium, and narrativium.” Baseline scans suggested that Sam Vimes contained higher levels of deitium than the average man; people _really_ believed in him. Also, all of his thaumium was purely of a quasi-demonic variety, for reasons Ponder had not yet been able to discern.

“How long will he be gone?” asked Rust.

“I really couldn’t speculate,” lied Ponder, who could absolutely speculate. He was a master speculator.

Rust looked over at Hex, in all of his disparate parts, and she moved toward the beehive, saying coyly, “I don’t suppose that upward-climbing little guard would die if your machine were to be accidentally dropped on the floor?”

She then very intentionally and not at all accidentally bumped into Hex, but every important bit of Hex that couldn’t survive being dropped was both bolted down and also glued. Lady Rust wasn’t actually clumsy, but students definitely were. A buzzing noise issued from Hex, although not from the beehive. 

“Uhm. That was unwise,” said Ponder, who took a few deliberate, considered steps away from Hex.

Lady Rust was then swarmed by _wasps_. Hex had requested a hive of paper wasps not long ago, and Ponder had initially assumed that Hex wanted the paper wasp hive so that Hex could run off his own parchment without needing someone to reload his sheets. That was so, but Hex had also made recent comments about needing the wasps for his ‘antimalware application’, expressing some concern about insecurities in the clacks system.

Ponder Stibbons hadn’t seen Hex’s antimalware application in action yet. He picked up his cup of coffee and reflected that he hadn’t expected that Lady Rust would be able to run like that in a skirt and heels.

* * *

The little office was cluttered with filing cabinets and strewn papers that would have made A. E. Pessimal itch, and adding a Vimes and a Codsworth only made the space seem smaller. There was a woman, pretty enough, with dark hair pulled into a bun, a sort of grey vest that had ceased to have any real colour over a shirt in the vicinity of white, with a pink scarf and skirt, arm wraps, and shoes of a style he didn’t really know but had seen around the village. She looked defeated, for lack of a better word, packing up loose paperwork and muttering to herself, “His ties? Oh, Nick…”

Upon sighting Vimes and Codsworth, she sighed, “Another stray coming in from the rain. 'Fraid you're too late. Office is closed.”

The mayor had said Nick Valentine, not Nicole or Nikki, and he’d said Mister Valentine, too. Vimes said, “Wait. Who are you? You aren’t the detective.”

“Me? No, I'm Nick's secretary. Ellie Perkins. Handle his appointments, his papers, that sort of thing. Well, that's what I used to do anyway, but now Nick's disappeared, and I can't keep a detective agency open without a detective,” the woman admitted. She listlessly tidied up around the place.

Mystic mumbo jumbo was at work here, and Vimes was too much of an old cynic for any of it. He’d found the bright heart, but this Ellie Perkins was no walker of dark alleys. To go find his boy, did Vimes need the dubious assistance some doubtless bribe-taking reject who probably didn’t even know how to _proceed_? Couldn’t he just do it himself, with the help of an occasional nice glass of water from Codsworth? But this occult rubbish was his only lead, such as it was, so Vimes offered, “Do you have any idea how I could find him?”

Ellie Perkins was clearly worried about her boss’s well-being, even if she was naive enough to not only tell a rough-looking devil who had just stepped in out of the rain but hope that the unknown man might go find Valentine for her. What kind of desperation was that? What mixture of naivete and utter lack of common sense could drive her to such a thing?

She explained, “He disappeared working a case. Skinny Malone's gang had kidnapped a young woman, and he tracked them down to their hideout in Park Street Station. There's an old Vault down there they use as a base. I told Nick he was walking into a trap, but he just smiled and walked out the door like he always does.”

Vimes had been known to walk into traps deliberately himself. Certainly, if he went after this Mr. Valentine, that would be exactly what he was doing. “Who's this Skinny Malone character?” Vimes wanted to know what he might be up against.

Ellie thought a moment and said, “I don't know much about him, but he's from Goodneighbor, and that means he's in the well-pressed suits and machine guns school of thuggery.”

“And what’s Goodneighbor?” Vimes pried.

“Yeah, it's a tough neighborhood. Northeast a ways. People with power there care about two things: style and body count,” Ellie explained.

Vimes considered the situation. He supposed it was yet more support for the conjecture that Diamond City Security was ignoring missing persons cases. For that matter, why was some debt collector working a kidnapping case?

“I’ll find him,” said Vimes, because clearly, someone had to.

Ellie looked so relieved that it was a bit painful for Vimes to think that she really was relying on a stranger, and she said, “Nick should be easy to spot. He's always wearing that old hat and trench coat getup. Please, hurry!”

Hat and trench coat? Like Inspector Lewton, then. Vimes stifled a groan. Then he looked to Codsworth, and he headed out to find Park Street Station and the vault beneath.

* * *

Along the way, Vimes and Codsworth tangled with some creatures that were bigger than humans and much greener. He said, “So they’re like orcs, if orcs were completely stupid?”

The only orc that he was aware of, Nutt, was a goalkeeper for the Unseen Academicals. Vimes was still faintly surprised that the first orc he’d heard of hadn’t been one applying to the Watch.

Codsworth said sarcastically, “A super mutant. One of the green brotherhood. How splendid. Just another welcoming and friendly neighborhood in the Commonwealth.”

“Super mutants, huh?” said Vimes, filing the term away, although he suspected that he would be likely to continue thinking of the super mutants as really dumb orcs for some time.

Eventually, Vimes found Park Street Station which, according to Ellie, would be above the Vault where Valentine was being held. Codsworth sniffed, “You don't suppose this vault was unfinished when the bombs fell? I can't imagine exposed dirt was the look they were going for.”

Vimes crept along inside, keeping to the shadows, trying not to draw the attention of the gangsters, who were human but had a sense of style similar to Chrysoprase. Unfortunately, having a flying squid golem made sneaking difficult. Codsworth had a zeal for battle that would have startled Vimes if not for the fact that Vimes was already well-acquainted with Willikins.

Willikins had been in a street gang, though. What excuse did Codsworth have for flying into battle while hollering, “Terrific, it's a fight then!”?

During the running battle, which carried itself along underground train tracks and eventually into Vault 114 itself, something rather odd happened. A man in a fedora and yellow trench coat showed up and shot one of the gangsters dead and then vanished. Some gun-toting maniac had murdered a man right in front of him! Vimes swore, “Bloody hells!” He wasn’t sure which hell; any one of them would do for his purposes. He hoped that was not the Nick Valentine he had been sent to find.

But then, there Sam was, trying to club gangsters with a bat. It wasn’t that he was trying to club them to death. It was just that they died. Vimes had been very good at coshing folks over the head with a blackjack and having them wake up later, no worse the wear, and while he knew well that head injuries could be much more serious than they looked, there was no way that he was hitting any of them that hard!

It also wasn’t like Codsworth listened to him when he told the golem not to set people on fire or not to saw them in half. No, the golem just shouted cheerily, “Come on, sir, we can take them!”

Sam had to take a moment to look suspiciously at the bat when one gangster’s head came flying off. This wasn’t the Summoning Dark. This wasn’t even his own dark side. This just didn’t even make any _sense_. He choked down a hysterical little laugh. Whatever he had to tell himself to keep going, eh?

Eventually, he heard a mobster taunting someone, “How you doing in there Valentine? Feeling hungry? Want a snack?”

“Keep talking, meat head. It'll give Skinny Malone more time to think about how he's going to bump you off,” a man’s voice said nonchalantly.

“Don't give me that crap, Valentine. You know nothin'. You got nothin',” the mobster said, but his confidence seemed to be shaking.

The prisoner said, “Really? I saw him writing your name down in that black book of his. 'Lousy cheating card shark' I think were his exact words. Then he struck the name across three times.”

True or not, the mobster seemed to buy it, quailing, “Three strikes? In the black book? But I never... Oh no... I gotta smoothe this over! Fast!”

The mobster started to run off, and Vimes did his best at hiding, but Codsworth continued to not be the best companion for a stealth operation. After a moment of wet unpleasantness, Sam heard the other man call, “Hey, you. I don't know who you are, but we got three minutes before they realize muscles-for brains ain't coming back. Get this door open. There's no lock on my end. You gotta use that terminal by the door.”

‘Terminal’. That was what the big imp-tech boxes that sat on desks were called. ‘Hacking’ was not, in fact, taking a sword to a device. It was a baffling sort of word game that Vimes barely understood and mostly devolved to him mashing at the keyboard while Codsworth looked faintly embarrassed. He had an irksome suspicion that Vetinari would have been really, really good at this ‘hacking’ word game, but Vimes had never liked games.

The door slid open, and in the dark, Vimes saw the silhouette of a man in a trench coat and fedora, a fair bit taller than he was, though nowhere near as tall as Carrot or even Angua, and perhaps just a little shorter than Sybil. The room was dark enough that, even with the Summoning Dark’s assistance, Vimes couldn’t make out his face. The man struck a match, lit a cigarette, and raised it to his mouth, the firelight illuminating his face and casting the details into sharp relief. Ellie Perkins had neglected something in describing her employer.

Mr. Nick Valentine was nonhuman. He was - Vimes hesitated, as details presented themselves to him - grey skinned, flesh torn, like a poorly maintained zombie, with a hint of clockwork showing through his wounds, and bright amber eyes, not the mad gold of a werewolf, but glowing arcs of light against black, like the glowing fire-coal eyes of a -

Golem. Mr. Nick Valentine was a golem, Vimes decided, as his teetering assessment of a conflicting mess of details collapsed, like a wave into a particle, into one unified concept.

Taking a moment to rethink certain assumptions, perhaps even _arse_ umptions, Vimes reflected that he had been wondering what was wrong with Mr. Nick Valentine. Perhaps he should have been asking - what was wrong with everyone else? Diamond City seemed to be a _heavily_ human village, and only a few decades ago, no one would have ever imagined a free golem could exist, let alone that one could be in the Watch.

As he stepped out of the shadows, Nick Valentine looked Sam Vimes up and down, assessing him, evidently amused. He dropped the hand holding his cigarette down to his side, returning his face to the shadows, and asked, “Ah, my knight-in-shining-armor. But the question is, why does he come all this way, risk life and limb, for an old private eye?”

Vimes felt, for a lack of a better word, suddenly self-conscious. He hadn’t been just a knight for some years, no, being a Duke superseded that, but he had been one, and was it really that obvious? He did prefer for his armour to not shine, though; it made sneaking harder, and he hated gilt by association. Vimes focused himself on why he was here and said, “Tracking a murderer. The bastard who shot my wife. Took my son. I don't even have a clue who he is or where he's gone.”

“So, you need a little angel of vengeance, huh? Well, I don't usually go after blood money, but I guess I can make an exception,” said the golem, taking another drag on his cigarette. What kind of golem smoked? And wore a fedora and trench coat… For a detective’s secretary, Ellie Perkins had a strange idea of the proper way to describe a missing person. “I've been cooped up in here for weeks. Turns out the runaway daughter I came here to find wasn't kidnapped. She's Skinny Malone's new flame, and she's got a mean streak. Anyway, you got troubles, and I'm glad to help. But now ain't the time. Let's blow this joint. Then we'll talk.”

Ah, Mr. Nick Valentine spoke of angels, as golems did. Angel of vengeance? Vimes already had the demon of vengeance. Maybe he needed to complete the set. Valentine extinguished his cigarette and was already sneaking off. Vimes followed.

Valentine’s voice was low, conspiratorial, as he crept through the Vault, and he could have given Codsworth a class in sneaking, because for all the gears and pipes and wires that showed through the rents in his skin, there was a nary a sound from the detective, save for his quiet voice, “Skinny Malone and the rest of his boys are waiting for us, somewhere. The name's, uh, ironic, but don't let that fool you. He's dangerous. Malone's crew here used to be small time, muscled out of the old neighborhood by bigger players. Until they found this place. Don't know what happened to the previous owners, but they're not exactly around to charge rent. An empty vault. Perfect hideout.”

Valentine craned his head around the door and looked into the other room, in a quick but graceful sweep that included not only left and right but up and down. Vimes thought about Buggy Swires and other aerial elements and also the fact of what dwarfs could most easily reach; yes, it was good to look both up and down. Valentine held up his right hand, which was bare metal, skeletal, but nothing like any skeleton Vimes had ever seen. “Hold up! I hear some of them coming. There they are. How do you want play this?”

Vimes had heard them, too, but he was… grudgingly impressed that Valentine had. Vimes had five-year sergeants who wouldn’t have heard them. Valentine must had heard Vimes coming, for that matter, because Valentine had been imprisoned here for weeks, and he had attempted to distract his jailer just as Vimes had been creeping up upon him. Valentine, Vimes noted, never entirely turned his back upon Vimes or Codsworth, those armed strangers of uncertain provenance who had come for him. Such situational awareness was a rare gift.

So, how did Vimes want to play this? 

He didn’t _want_ to be playing this at all. But if Valentine was going to leave it up to him - why was Valentine leaving it up to him? - Sam was just going to sneak past the triggermen that he could, and those were the lucky ones. The others ended up coshed over the head.

In the next hallway, Valentine murmured, “Nice and quiet. You keep this up, you'll make a name for yourself. Not a good name, mind you, but who cares?”

“I’ve got a name,” Vimes grunted, “and whether it’s a good one or not depends on who’s asking.”

The golem examined the door at the end of the hallway. “This door's on the fritz. Let me see if I can get it open… Almost got it... there we are.” The door slid open. “Hell of a lot easier to do when the lock isn't on the other side...”

There were a few more mobsters to fight their way past, and then, there were stairs, and Valentine complained, “More stairs? Who built this damn Vault, a fitness instructor?”

Vimes wondered why a golem was complaining about stairs. As far as he could tell, it wasn’t like Valentine could get out of breath, because he didn’t see the golem breathing at all. Shortly thereafter, there was then a group of men on the floor who were also not breathing, but that was because they were dead, and they were dead because Valentine and Codsworth and Sam had killed them. The trio approached another door, this one much larger and wider than the others. Valentine inspected the control panel next to it and murmured, “Another locked door. Shouldn't be too hard...”

Valentine paused at the keyboard of the terminal, and Vimes studied him. Valentine’s eyes never looked at the keyboard, staying mostly on the terminal’s screen, although he did glance around at the door, the way they’d came, Codsworth, and Vimes himself. His fingers found the keys they needed without looking and blurred, moving more quickly than Vimes could follow, and in less than perhaps a second, the door was opening, and there was Valentine, ambling towards it, one hand reaching into his pocket. As the door opened, he cautioned, “Okay, I got it, but I hear big, fat footsteps on the other side. Once we step through this door, get ready for anything.” 

The door opened and revealed several armed humans, including two that Vimes took to be Skinny Malone and Darla, based off previous descriptions. Malone was a broad man in a black suit, the sort that Chrysoprase favoured, and he carried what Vimes was learning was a submachine gun. Malone demanded, “Nicky? What're you doin'? You come into my house. Shoot up my guys. You have any idea how much this is gonna set me back?”

Valentine snarled unrepentantly, “I wouldn't be here if it weren't for your two-timing dame, Skinny. You ought to tell her to write home more often.”

Darla, a young woman with dark hair, a grey dress, and a very unladylike swatter, mocked, “Awww... poor little Valentine. Ashamed you got beat up by a girl? I'll just run back home to daddy, shall I?”

Valentine, for his part, did not seem to be particularly ashamed of having been beaten by the girl he had been hired to retrieve.

Malone threatened, “Should've left it alone, Nicky. This ain't the old neighborhood. In this Vault, I'm king of the castle, you hear me? And I ain't lettin' some private dick shut us down now that I finally got a good thing goin'!”

Vimes wasn’t sure what a private dick was, but it sounded like the stage name of a dancer at the Blue Cat Club, perhaps one who favoured a military theme. That conjecture did not, however, make sense in context.

Darla sniffed, “I told you we should've just killed him, but then you had to get all sentimental! All that stupid crap about the ‘old times.’”

Malone snapped in anger at his moll, “Darla, I'm handling this! Skinny Malone's always got things under control!”

There was trouble in paradise, huh? From where Vimes was standing, it looked like Darla just loved to push Malone’s buttons. He wondered how long she’d last.

Darla demanded, “Oh yeah, then what's this guy doing here, huh? Valentine must have brought him here to rub us all out!”

Vimes was offended; he was his own thug, _thank you very much_. “Oh, me?” He looked at the bloody bat in his hand in an absent-minded sort of way, as if he didn’t know how it had gotten there. “I’m just a bystander, and I’ll be on my way, and of course, I can take this naughty fellow,” and he grabbed Valentine’s sleeve with his free hand, “out of your sight, and keep him occupied, free of charge. We’ll never bother you again.”

He was providing a valuable service, at a discount! He was lying. It was the Ankh-Morpork way. Skinny Malone was very much the sort of person that Vimes suspected he would be bothering again.

Skinny barked angrily, “You and Nick shot all of my crew and you expect to just… Agh! All right, you're lucky I still owe him for that time back in the Quarry. I'm gonna give you two until the count of ten before I forget my good manners, and just start shooting up the place!”

Darla demanded incredulously, “What are you doin', Skinny? Kill 'em!”

Vimes, however, was already running likes blazes. He’d let go of Valentine’s sleeve, and it seemed the golem couldn’t run as fast as Vimes could, but he was running, and Codsworth was… flying, and so that was all present that Vimes cared about at the moment accounted for. They found a service ladder and made it to the surface.

Valentine stared up at the night sky with clear delight on his face and stretched. He exulted, “Ah, look at that Commonwealth sky. Never thought anything so naturally ominous could end up looking so inviting...” Then his gaze turned considering and suspicious and fixed on Vimes. “Thanks for getting me out. How did you know where to find me, anyway? Not many people knew where I went...”

And, at that suspicious look, Vimes thought, _Good. Finally! Finally someone is looking at me like the bloody suspicious bastard that I am making absolutely no effort to conceal that I am._ He did have a good answer, though. “Your secretary, Ellie. She sent me.”

“She did? I should give her a raise. I appreciate it, but a good Samaritan in these parts is liable to end up on the wrong side of a loaded gun. I should know,” said Valentine, who chuckled ruefully to himself. “Now, you mentioned something about tracking down a murderer, and how he took your son. I want you to come to my office in Diamond City. Give me all the details. Besides, I think you've earned a chance to sit down and clear your head.”

Vimes put aside the fact that he didn’t know what a Samaritan was and instead focused on the fact that, despite the fighting and the running, Valentine had remembered what Vimes had told him about why he’d gone looking for the old detective. “I’ll walk with you there.” A witch had set him to find this Mr. Nick Valentine, and Vimes wasn’t going to let the golem out of his sight now. He shouldered the bat and held his hand out to shake. “I’m… Sam Vimes.”

There was an odd moment of pause, and then Valentine took his hand and shook it. 

* * *

Ponder Stibbons had not initially set out to make a game. He had been thinking, rather morbidly, using some of the precious little morbidity that was allocated to departments that weren’t Post-Mortem Communications, about the Mage Wars, and about how the Mage Wars had basically been the End of the World. Only, the Disc had bounced back over the millennia that had followed. The standard story was that the Mage Wars had occured when the Disc was new, not long after the introduction of humanity to the Disc.

The biggest problem with that line of thought was troll history. It went back too far. Generations of wizards had solved this problem by ignoring it, by stubbornly insisting that trolls didn’t know what their own writings were saying and, in any case, there was no way those writings were really that old. The truth was, however, that wizards knew nothing about dating.

Then there were the Devices that the dwarfs found, which were millions of years old and still functional. After the events of Koom Valley Day 1991 (University Calendar), the wizards who had been solidly ignoring such Devices were still ignoring them, but Ponder Stibbons had become at least vaguely aware of them. No one called them magic. They were just Devices. The Artificers’ Guild took an interest in them. Ponder Stibbons had never actually seen one, but he knew enough that if it walked like a duck and quacked like a duck, then the Archchancellor was going to shoot it.

(The Devices were probably magic, Ponder thought.)

So there was a heretical line of thought that the Mage Wars were not one, singular war. There were trashy screeds to be found in the Library that posited that multiple Mage Wars had occurred. Even putting those aside, the question dangled: if the Mage Wars had happened once, could they happen again?

Bugarup University, which was on the other side of the Disc, was almost tolerable to Unseen University, but Brazeneck College, in spitting-distance Pseudopolis, was entirely too close for comfort, and some of Ponder’s students, the more foreign ones, had mentioned other so-called wizards’ colleges in distant parts, such as a college in Krull, that the darkest rumours claimed had actually sorted out its plumbing problem. Too many wizards could be a powder keg, if not provided with sufficient distractions. What would happen if someone set it all off? The thought worried Ponder Stibbons.

Conventional books and conventional wizards insisted that the Mage Wars could not happen again because the Mage Wars had required the wild magic that had just been sitting around, where anyone could get at it, at the dawn of time, and that with the wild magic diluted and weakened and tamed as it was now, the Mage Wars could never happen again. There were other Sources of magic, of course, but that was the real, er, reason, that wizards were forbidden to marry.

Which was, of course, why Dr. Earwig had gone and married Letice Earwig. Wizards were forbidden to marry. Of course they were. Ponder was also vaguely aware that wizards marrying was not the actual problem, as it were.

There had been Diamanda, a silly young witch in Lancre that everyone had expected Ponder to be interested in. He hadn’t been. But no, the actual problem wasn’t wizards _marrying..._

So what if the Mage Wars happened again? Maybe the wild magic was gone. Could the Mage Wars happen… without magic? It was a preposterous suggestion, and that had made it very interesting, indeed. Hex had sorted through the possible alternative timelines of Roundworld, and Hex had come up with several that had met Ponder’s parameters.

Then Xian Ju, one of Ponder’s graduate students, who was Agatean, had pointed out that the general setting concept was actually pretty interesting, and maybe it could make the basis for a game that was a bit more interesting than one about water fowl where one was not allowed to shoot the dog. Ponder Stibbons wasn’t much the sort to say ‘no’ to many things; no one ended up with as many thankless titles piled upon him as Ponder did by saying ‘no’.

So they’d ended up with a game, and His Grace, Commander Vimes, was now somehow stuck inside the game.

Now Hex had scribed a printout asking for something called a Transport Layer Security (TLS) Handshake Protocol. Ponder turned and called, “Chatur! Hex wants a TLS. Could you get that for him?”

Ponder would have done it himself, but he had a meeting to get to that had already happened, so if he didn’t go, he would cause a causality error. He would have skipped it, otherwise.

Chatur Bakshi was another one of Ponder’s innumerable graduate students. He was Klatchian and had a particularly neat mustache and beard. Despite being foreigners, or perhaps because of, Klatch reportedly had an excellent educational system, so Ponder really had not the foggiest idea why Chatur had come to Unseen University, but Chatur was here, and Hex wanted a TLS, and Ponder really had to go before he accidentally ran into himself in a hallway. So he left Chatur leaning over the printout, scratching his head and muttering, “Oh, I suppose we didn’t expect the Sole Survivor to try to shake Nick Valentine’s hand, should have animated that beforehand, let me just patch that in…”

* * *

On the walk back from Vault 114, Valentine never did entirely turn his back on Vimes and Codsworth, which meant that Valentine walked more or less at Vimes’s left hand, just a half step behind, with Codsworth floating on Vimes’s right. As they walked, Valentine animatedly explained, “Traveling in the Commonwealth as long as I have, you learn a few things. These old buildings and alleyways give you a lot of opportunities to hide if things get bad, but that goes both ways. Always keep your eyes out, and your head on a swivel. Things can go from calm to deadly in a heartbeat.”

The old golem detective seemed to be genuinely delighted to have someone to talk to who wasn’t imprisoning or trying to kill him. Vimes was bewildered by the situation. Valentine was the first person he had met in the Commonwealth who seemed to have the common sense to even consider these sorts of things, but in Vimes’s experience, the people who paid attention were suspicious buggers who weren’t about to just up and warn other people. Vimes struggled to think of anyone he had ever met who combined a deep, abiding, world-weary cynicism about the nature of sapient beings with an open-eyed desire to be sincerely helpful to his fellow being. The best he could come up with was the concept of an older Carrot who had been a bit battered and betrayed by the world. Vimes was, despite himself, rather depressed by that thought.

In any case, Vimes had already surmised that the Commonwealth was like the worst parts of the Shades, with none of the fun parts, combined with the Hubland barbarian territories, not that he had ever been there, dunked in a high magic slurry. He didn’t need anyone to tell him that alleyways had a lot of opportunities to hide. Vimes sighed, “Skip the policing 101 lecture, Nick, and just get to the location specifics.”

‘Nick’. He’d rescued the golem and had his back in a fight. That put them on a first name basis, didn’t it? Vimes felt entitled, in any case.

The golem arched an eyebrow and shrugged a shoulder, and then he continued, “Diamond City is as close to safe as you can get in these parts. Security keeps the perimeter under control, but it's always a struggle. Despite the Mayor's bragging, it really is the most secure settlement around, even if it comes with a few uptight guards.”

Vimes had seen the wall, and he thought about how easily he had gotten into the city. He’d seen a thousand reasons why security was a struggle. Vimes said impishly, “Uptight guards? I’m sure I have no idea what you mean.”

Valentine levelled a look on Vimes that suggested that Valentine knew that Vimes was nowhere near as innocent as he was acting and was, in general, nowhere near innocent and, in fact, may have been the complete polar opposite of innocent and might just have been guilty of _everything_ , and Vimes met Valentine’s look with a blank, bland look of his own, and he had the sense that neither of them would have broken the stare for quite some time.

What did break the stare early was Valentine’s gaze flicking up to a rooftop. He snapped, perfunctorily, “Dumb move,” drew his sidearm, and fired all in one smooth movement. The raider fell over the edge of the roof and landed in a heap on the street, her rifle clattering down next to her. Valentine stood over the body and said, with some disgust and regret, “Should've just run.”

They didn’t have much trouble aside from that. The way back from Vault 114 was much quieter than the way there. Valentine clearly knew the neighbourhood, and the neighbourhood, it seemed, knew Valentine, and, for the most part, seemed to know better than to find itself in a dark alley with Valentine.

Ellie looked heavily relieved when Vimes and Codsworth returned back with Nick Valentine. Vimes had to wonder if any of his Watch would have been so happy to see him return, if he had been imprisoned for a few weeks.

Probably?

Carrot, at least.

Probably.

Ellie, in fact, exclaimed, “Nick!? Oh God, it's really you!”

Which god, Vimes wondered. Most didn’t invoke only one without specifying. That seemed… dangerous. At least with a scattershot approach of invoking all the gods, one wasn’t going to offend any by leaving them out.

“Well, it's hard to mistake this mug for anyone else,” Valentine teased, one hand on his hip.

Ellie was smiling even as she scolded, as if the golem were her trouble-prone older brother, “Hmph. You keep laughing at death, some day, death's going to laugh back.”

Valentine said airily, “Not as long as I got a few friends to back me up.”

“We’re _friends_ now, are we?” Vimes said coolly, narrowing his eyes and looking sidelong at Codsworth. Ambitious in his friends-making, was Valentine?

Ellie, though, continued to effuse her gratitude, “Thanks so much for bringing Nick back.”

Vimes tapped his foot a bit and ahemed. “I _did_ want to talk to him about a case.” It was strange to be on the other side of things. Vimes didn’t like it at all. “My case.”

Ellie looked startled to be reminded that, yes, the fiend with the bloody bat who’d dragged home her employer was a client. “Oh, of course! There's just a small clerical thing we need to clear up.” She pulled out a tidy sum of bottle caps and placed it in Vimes’s hands. “Here. I know an amount wasn't on the table when you went out to find him, but you deserve a reward. Plus a little something extra.”

Vimes was, begrudgingly, used to being the richest man in Ankh-Morpork. He opened his mouth to say that he certainly didn’t need any reward, and then he remembered where he was, and he closed his mouth. Though, looking around the cramped little office, he was torn. Vimes might be a violent homeless drifter, and he still thought that maybe Ellie and Valentine needed the caps more than he did.

Ellie gave Vimes a sparkling smile that bordered on mischievous, and she said, “You know, if you're looking for work, and don't mind putting on the detective hat, Nick sure could use a new partner...” She then pressed a folded trench coat that was, curiously, Vimes’s size, not Valentine’s, and a fedora into his hands.

Valentine looked slightly alarmed and held his hands up. “Whoa. One case at a time, Ellie. Our new friend needs our help, first.”

With amusement, Vimes watched Valentine squirm as his secretary all but tried to hire Vimes. The trench coat was, aside from being his size, in better repair than Valentine’s trench coat, and it seemed to afford better protection than his current attire, so Vimes slipped it on overtop and put the hat on his head. It would keep off the rain, at least. He did wonder what had happened to Valentine’s old partner, but there was that word again: ‘friend’.

Vimes had to admit that, so far, he’d watched his wife’s murder and his son’s kidnapping, helplessly, _impotently_ , and had then ran into cowering settlers who had required saving from blood-thirsty raiders because their leader was a dangerously naive soul who trusted Vimes with Power Armour and a minigun, had failed to save some farmers from murderous extortion, and had then narrowly avoided being ambushed by a pack of murderers who would have taken his life and left his stripped body in a pile in the basement. At the city gates, he had met a lying reporter, incompetent guards, and a politician who was, well, a politician.

Now he was sitting down on the other side of Nick Valentine’s desk, and Vimes reflected that the first decent man who had his head on halfway straight that Vimes had met the entire time was not a man at all. 

Valentine, who had also sat down, even looked… concerned. Why would he give a damn? He had no reason to, but evidently, he did. “When you're trying to find someone who's gone missing, the devil is in the details. Tell me everything you can, no matter how... painful it might be.”

So Vimes did talk, back and forth, and he wondered how many Watchmen he had who could have interviewed a grieving widower and father with half as much tact as Valentine did. Vimes knew his Watchmen, and if he’d had to sit down and explain the matter to most of them, he knew he would have ended up punching at least half of them before they’d finished the first question, and it was only half he’d end up actually punching because some of them would know to duck his swing.

Oh, Nobby. What had it come to, that he was missing Nobby?

With regards to young Sam’s kidnapping, Valentine speculated, “Someone would be taking on all of his care, and a child needs a lot of it...”

What experience with human children did a golem have?

Vimes made himself continue, even though the memories filled him with a rage that was entirely too large for the tiny office, “We were in a Vault when it happened. Vault 111. It was some kind of… cold facility.” His wife was murdered, his son was gone, and his frozen heart would never be warm again. Ice sludged through his veins like needles. The world had already burned in fire, and now Sam Vimes had been unleashed to end it all again in frost, if he had to, to see his vengeance done.

Valentine jotted down notes in an inhumanly neat and regular handwriting in a notebook and said thoughtfully, “You were on ice, huh? More importantly, you were underground. Sealed up. That's a lot of obstacles to get through just to take one person.”

Vimes corrected, “Two people,” using the term loosely, “a man,” a bastard, “and a woman,” a bitch, “dressed like a Knockerman, human-sized… They didn't say much, but I remember they called me ‘the backup.’”

The golem detective nodded and wrote down more notes. “So we're talking a small team. Professionals. The kind that know to keep their lips tight when they're on the job. Not sure what ‘the backup’ means though...”

Neither did Vimes. It was cryptic, and it irritated him on general principles. He said weakly, “My wife was... murdered. Sybil was trying to keep them from taking young Sam, and they... they just…”

Sybil. If the woman had another second, she would have strangled that bitch of a kidnapper and then used her dead body to beat the other bastard to death, Vimes was certain. She just didn’t have a second. The gun had taken it from her and her from him.

Ellie said gently, “It's okay. You don't need to say anything more.”

It was sympathetic of her to say, but Vimes knew that was more to say and miles to go.

“So we're talking about a group of cold-hearted killers, but they waited until something went wrong to resort to violence,” Valentine speculated, tapping his pencil against his notepad.

Their hearts could never be as cold as Vimes’s was now.

Valentine continued, “That confirms it. This isn't a random kidnapping. Whoever took your kid had an agenda. Hmm... There's a lot of groups in the Commonwealth that take people. Raiders, Super Mutants, the Gunners, and of course, there's the Institute.”

Sam was aware of raiders and super mutants, insofar as he had killed a number of them. He hadn’t heard of Gunners yet nor the Institute. If any of those groups were responsible, Sam Vimes would come for them, and then, no one would hear of them ever again. Except as a warning. He asked, “Institute?”

Valentine shrugged. “Well, they're the boogeyman of the Commonwealth. Something goes wrong, everyone blames them. Easy to see why. Those early model synths of theirs strip whole towns for parts, killing everything in their way. Then you got the newer models, good as human, that infiltrate cities and pull strings from the shadows.” The golem’s expression turned bleak. “Worst of all, no one knows why they do it, what their plan is, or where they are. Not even me, and I'm a synth myself. A discarded prototype, anyway.”

Vimes considered that information carefully. So Mr. Nick Valentine was, as Vimes had surmised, a created being. The exposed gears, wires, and pipes sort of made that obvious. So he was a special sort of golem called a synth. Valentine had, it sounded, been created by an evil master. Vimes closed his eyes, imagining golems falling on a town and taking it and its citizens apart. He could see it, but he wished that he could unsee it. Valentine looked more like a man than most golems, and here he was saying that there were newer models of golems that could replicate a human entirely, like some sort of doppelganger. The Patrician could have done terrifying things with golems that could replace humans. In the absence of the Patrician, Vimes assumed the situation was merely horrible. 

Valentine was matter-of-fact if depressed about admitting he was an Institute synth, as if there was no point in concealing the matter, so Vimes, nosy as he was, had to ask, “Really? The Institute made you, and you have no idea what they’re up to?”

Valentine looked melancholy, but he answered anyway, “Some kind of security setting strips or blocks out those memories. And it's not just me. Any synth that gets trashed, left behind, or escapes the Institute has the same problem. Probably some kind of failsafe.”

That seemed like a particularly convenient excuse, so of course, Vimes did not trust it, but Valentine had to know how asinine it sounded, and he was offering it up as an explanation, anyway. Seven hells, maybe it was true? In any case, Vimes thought about asking about the Gunners and then realized that he was ranging far off topic. He rubbed his temples. “The woman was dressed in… well, I said it was like the Knockermen... I think it was a kind of hazard suit? The man had... some sort of metal brace on his arm.”

“Maybe some kind of improvised armor? Lot of hired guns do that to look tough. The hazard suit is interesting. Not many mercs can afford something that fancy.” Something seemed to be ticking at the golem detective’s mind. Vimes wondered what was written on his chem.

Vimes tried to force himself to give a better description. He knew he would be annoyed at a witness that was giving as scanty a description as he was. “Bloody bugger came right up to me while I was trapped in that frozen coffin. Bald head, scar across his left eye.” He gestured. Vimes himself had a scar over his right eye, and he rubbed it, feeling bleary.

There was recognition in the golem’s arc-light eyes. “Wait. It couldn't be... You didn't hear the name ‘Kellogg’ at all, did you?”

“No,” said Vimes, who had not. “I wouldn't be in your office if I'd heard a name.” He would have hunted the name to the edge of the Disc and then erased it from history. 

“Hmm... it's way too big of a coincidence...” Valentine said, rubbing his chin. He looked up to his secretary. “Ellie, what notes do we have about the Kellogg case?”

Ellie withdrew a manila folder from one of the filing cabinets and peeked inside. She replied, “The description matches. Bald head. Scar. Reputation for dangerous mercenary work, but no one knows who his employer is.”

Valentine rose and took the folder from Ellie, sheafing through it himself. “And he bought a house here in town, right? And he had a kid with him, didn't he?”

Ellie nodded. “Yeah, that's right. The house in the abandoned West Stands. The boy with him was around ten years old.”

Codsworth suggested, “Perhaps it is another kidnapped child? Oh dear me.”

“Yeah. Either that, or he's got a son of his own. Not a comforting thought in any case…” Valentine shifted uncomfortably.

Vimes stood up in a bolt and put his hands down on the desk, shaking it. “You said he lives here? He's still in town?” Kellogg. He had a name now. He’d kill him. He’d see his blood run cold.

Valentine tilted his head to the side and put a hand over Vimes’s to protect his desk from any further unprovoked acts of aggression, and he said gently, “Both of them vanished a while ago. Haven't been heard or seen since. Let's you and I take a walk over to Kellogg's last known address. See if we can snoop out where he went.”

Ellie warned. “Security doesn't really go to that part of town, but you two should still be careful.”

Valentine said, cheekily amused, “I always am…”

Vimes thought, _No, you aren’t._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **We love comments of all lengths, and understand the need for low-energy commenting like kudos. If you ever find yourself wanting to give us additional kudos, feel free to leave a comment of an icon or emoji of a heart!** <3


	3. California Sunlight Cigars * The Frozen TV Dinner * A Bit of Fantasy * Magic Resizing Armor * Beep, Beep, Beep

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter song: [Kill Everyone](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RybPdm1Hqk&list=PLLEELrwJ-FyotucudE52BnFg6vVn1AGne&index=5&t=0s) by Hollywood Undead

_California Sunlight Cigars * The Frozen TV Dinner * A Bit of Fantasy * Magic Resizing Armor * Beep, Beep, Beep_

Valentine made a game try at jimmying the lock on Kellogg’s house and was clearly frustrated when he admitted defeat. “Lock's too stubborn for me. Why don't you give it a try?”

“Do I look like a man who knows how to pick a lock?” Vimes said, mock-innocently, pulling out a hair pin and a screwdriver and kneeling before the lock. He probed out the tumblers with the hair pin, and found that the keyway curved in a key path that made setting the hair pin into place extremely difficult. Valentine watched as Vimes worked, his expression appraising. After several fruitless tries, he grimaced. “No good. I need my lockpicks.” Vimes flashed Valentine a mad smile.

Then he backed up a few steps, got a running start, and tried to kick down the door. For his effort, Vimes was rewarded with a sore foot. Valentine covered his mouth with a hand to hide his smirk, and Vimes glared at him. Then the golem suggested, “No luck? Guess we'll need to find the key. You see that platform in the distance? Near the city entrance? That's the elevator to the Mayor's office. Why don't you go ask around there? I'll stay here.” 

So Vimes took Codsworth to the Mayor’s office. Who knows, maybe he could get a warrant? Maybe pigs would fly. As it was, Piper was already in the office, arguing with the Mayor’s secretary, a pale woman with pale hair, a white blouse, and a black skirt. She looked cleaner than the average Commonwealth citizen.

Piper demanded, “Why doesn't the mayor come out of his office, huh? He afraid of talking to the press? I bet if I said I was with the Institute, he'd come running...”

Cattily, the secretary said, “You ever think maybe you could get a man's attention easier if you used softer words, honey? Maybe shout a little less?”

“Ah, that reminds me of this article I'm writing about the mayor's affair with a certain air-headed, blonde…” said Piper snidely.

Vimes rolled his eyes. Muckraking. At least no one would ever accuse him of an affair. Sam Vimes wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, maybe he wasn’t even a spoon, but he was honest.

The secretary said coolly, “If you are done crowding the reception area, Miss Piper, the Mayor needs to make time for more... responsible citizens.”

“Hmph. I was just leaving anyway,” said Piper. She crossed her arms and departed.

The secretary addressed Vimes blandly, “The Mayor is receiving visitors, as long as they aren't members of the press. Did you need help?”

“I need to talk to someone about Kellogg's old house in the West Stands,” said Vimes carefully.

The secretary said, “Mister Kellogg's residence? He left town a while ago. We foreclosed on the property and locked it up. If there was something belonging to the man that you have a claim on, you could ask the mayor to hear you out. No guarantees.”

“So I can just head in and talk to McDonough?” Vimes asked, slightly incredulous.

The secretary waved him off. “Go right ahead. His office is open. He likes to make time for everyone when he can.”

So Vimes and Codsworth just walked right in.

McDonough said, “Ah, yes. I remember you. Our new arrival. I wish I was in your shoes. Getting to see our glorious city for the first time. How can I help you?”

McDonough must not have had much of a sense of taste, to be able to swallow his own ordure that he was spewing. Vimes drew himself up, caught McDonough’s gaze, and he commanded calmly, “A man named Kellogg used to live in this city. I need to search his house.”

The little man tried to be stern. “I see. Well, whatever reasons you have, I take my citizens' privacy very seriously. Even after they've left. I can't allow you to invade someone else's home. That's all there is to it.”

Vimes shifted his weight slightly, and he played with his wedding ring and speculated, “I think Kellogg killed my wife and kidnapped my son. Now, I could think someone else did it. I’d have to, if you won’t let me in that house, now wouldn’t I? Because if you were obstructing me, that would mean you had something to hide, didn’t it?”

Everyone was guilty of something. They only had to be reminded of it.

It didn’t take much to remind McDonough. He sputtered, “Oh, of course... I-I will do everything in my power to help you overcome this horrible personal tragedy. I remember Mister Kellogg. Didn't like him myself. Paranoid. Never talked to anyone. I doubt you'll find him. But I insist you take the key to his old house. It's been abandoned, though. I'm afraid this whole thing might be fruitless.”

Vimes gave McDonough a smile that showed all his teeth and stated flatly, “I’ll find him.” He snatched the key away from McDonough and stalked back to Kellogg’s house.

Valentine straightened guiltily; Vimes had caught him having another try at the lock. He pushed the golem aside. Humanlike or not, Valentine was heavy. Metal bones? Vimes didn’t care. He opened the door. Valentine commented, “Place seem small to you? Figured a guy like Kellogg would think big...”

He fanned off to the right. Vimes and Codsworth went left. Valentine called out, “Nothing here. Did you check out that desk?”

Vimes tilted the desk up. There was a button. He pushed it. A secret door opened.

Valentine had started to say something else, but he corrected to, “Well... That's one way to hide a room. Look at this. All of a merc's favorite things...” His gaze flicked over the bullets, cigars, and alcohol. He picked up one of the cigars, which had ‘California Sunlight Cigars’ written on it. “Interesting brand. Won't lead us anywhere on its own, though.”

Vimes groused, “Cigars! Of course he smokes cigars. And he’s got a scar over the left eye, because of course he does.” He rubbed the scar over his right eye. He wished Angua was here. Get Angua in this man’s house, and she could track down where he’d gone.

Valentine looked over some of Kellogg’s old clothing and gave it an experimental sniff, thinking. “There is someone I know. A specialist, of a kind. Always goes his own way, but I can get him here.”

“Yes, get him here,” Vimes commanded absently, as if Valentine were one of his sergeants.

Valentine walked outside, and he whistled, and he waited. Vimes bit his lower lip. Valentine had whistled? Really? Vimes had only seen humans and golems and super mutants, but -

Then, in the distance, he saw Dogmeat running up. Ah, yes, Dogmeat. Probably not a werewolf, Vimes didn’t think. Dogmeat barked approvingly at Valentine, and the dog followed them back into Kellogg’s secret room, sniffing everything, as dogs were wont to do. Valentine’s expression regarding the dog was soft and familiar. The golem knew the stray dog that had assisted Vimes earlier and could summon him with a whistle? Valentine suggested, “Well, Dogmeat seems eager for the job. Why don't you let him have a whiff? See if he picks up on the trail.”

Follow a dog to a murderer and kidnapper. Sure. Vimes had once tried to use a swamp dragon to track a noble dragon. Dogmeat was no Angua, but he’d do in a pinch. 

Valentine made sure to look Vimes in the eyes, and he said quietly, “Before you head out... I know this is personal business. If you have to face Kellogg on your own, just say so. Besides, you already have plenty of company. We can't all go sniffing through the Commonwealth after one man.”

 _Personal_. Now that wasn’t the real issue of why Valentine was discreetly attempting to hand Vimes a fat sack of plausible deniability. The issue was that Vimes had a killing glint in his eyes. He’d seen Diamond City Security. He saw that Diamond City citizens turned to a private investigator to investigate their crimes because Diamond City Security was concerned with the wall and little else. If Kellogg was his man, there’d be no arrest. There’d be no point to it. There was no jury in Diamond City. No judge.

In the wild, where there was no law but the law a man carried with him, a hero killed villains. So did a serial killer.

Valentine seemed like a decent man, for all that he wasn’t a man or perhaps _because_ he wasn’t a man. Vimes hated to do this to him, but if turned out that Kellogg wasn’t his man, he wanted someone to hold him back. He said quietly, “I want you with me on this, Nick.”

The golem slowly smiled, lopsided. He had an open case on Kellogg, didn’t he? “All right. Let's get that bastard. This is your show from here on out, okay? You say jump, I'll say how high.”

* * *

Vimes sent Codsworth back to Sanctuary to help organize the reconstruction efforts, and then he headed off with Valentine and Dogmeat. Every so often, Dogmeat would pause at a discarded cigar or a bloody scrap of torn fabric. Along the way, they ran across a yao guai, which was sort of like a bear, but no one would dress up a yao guai in a little hat and try to make it ride around on a unicycle if they valued their lives. Vimes ducked in and tried to clout it about the head with his bat. He evaded its snapping jaws, but it batted him away with a swipe of a paw that shredded his shirt and the flesh of his abdomen to the fat but no deeper.

Valentine pumped lead bullets into the yao guai, which didn’t even seem to feel it through its thick hide. Vimes was certainly feeling his injuries. Dogmeat snarled and leapt onto the yao guai, sinking his teeth into the bear’s neck.

Nobility sometimes took dogs bear-hunting. That had never seemed fair to Vimes, neither fair to the dogs nor fair to the bear, but Dogmeat, he was a volunteer, wasn’t he?

He rolled away, pulled a stimpack out of his backpack, and shot it up into his arm. Somehow, stimpacks made wounds heal almost instantly, without scars. Vimes didn’t trust them, but the alternative was bleeding out. Stimpacks felt like burning, anyway. They felt bad enough that he wasn’t concerned about developing an addiction.

Vimes rallied to his feet and dove into the fray again, battering the yao guai over and over again as Valentine shouted angrily at the animal, “What else ya got?” and Dogmeat snarled. Between his bat and Valentine’s revolver and Dogmeat’s harrying teeth and claws, the creature finally went down. Vimes slumped down next to it, feeling faint. Something red spread over his eyes, and he realized it was his own blood. He was bleeding from his head. Dogmeat was whimpering. The yao guai had slashed the dog but good.

Vimes considered how often Sybil tried to use swamp dragon remedies on him. Hesitantly, he tried a stimpack on the dog, which seemed to work, as Dogmeat perked up immediately and barked happily. Valentine saw, and he assured, “You're gonna be just fine, boy.”

Valentine looked like more of a mess than he usually did. He was a synth, a sort of fancy golem, but stimpacks frankly smacked of magic, and magic didn’t have to make sense. Magic just was. Vimes hated magic for that. He tried a stimpack on Valentine, who gave him a grateful smile, stood up, and said, “Thanks. I needed a little tune-up.”

Vimes wiped the blood out of his eyes, and he popped open a bottle of Nuka-Cola and swigged it down. The soft drink made his Pip-Boy whine at him, but it was refreshing and faintly reminded him of a fruitier root beer. He considered the dead yao guai. If he was a country boy, he could have butchered it and had meat for days. Vimes thought about the meagre food stores in his backpack, and against his better judgement, he tried butchering it, anyway. When he was done, Vimes concluded that butchering was better left to actual Guild Butchers, but he had some yao guai ribs, which he shoved in his backpack. Somehow, shoving food in his backpack, even raw meat, never seemed to make a mess.

Past a bridge, they ran across a badly damaged war golem. It seemed that none of them could figure out anything useful to do with it, although Valentine had, “The difference between robots and synths? Well, we're prettier, to start with,” to say for himself. From that, Vimes inferred that “robots” were the specialized sort of metal golem category to which Codsworth belonged.

Eventually, they made it to a fort, one Fort Hagen, which was mostly buried. Valentine gave Dogmeat a good scritching between the ears and said, “I knew Dogmeat would sniff our man out. Let's you and I take it from here. Give our four-legged friend a break.”

Vimes nodded, and after some climbing and dealing with magic, self-operating guns (horrid little devices), they entered the fort via a roof hatch. Valentine observed, “An old military fort. Not a bad place to operate from. Plenty of security. Keep your guard up. He might try to ambush us.” 

“Try? No. He will,” Vimes said flatly. He crept along stealthily. They weren’t alone in the building. There were more of those synth golems, although they seemed to be more primitive than Valentine and most were in much worse repair. He didn’t think any of them had noticed him, though he already had the bat ready at hand.

From a tinny speaking box, he heard a commanding voice like sandpaper say, _“If it isn't my old friend, the frozen TV dinner. Last time we met, you were cozying up to the peas and apple cobbler.”_

Sam Vimes would know the voice of his wife’s murderer and son’s kidnapper anywhere, no matter how distorted by poor acoustics. Mr. Nick Valentine, any gods of his choice bless him, had not been wrong in his conjecture as to whose _modus operandi_ fit Vimes’s case. He was close. The Summoning Dark was laughing at him. He didn’t care.

After the speaking box message, the enemy golems noticed him. One calling out, “You cannot remain undetected for long.”

Synths went down to being coshed over the head, much like a human or dwarf would. They went down to being smashed in the torso. They went down to having their legs swept out from under them and whatever served as their spines snapped in half. The poor buggers were shooting at him and trying to kill him, yes, but they didn’t really seem to be doing anything wrong so much as they were _obstructing_. Obstructing was a workhorse. A half clever copper could almost always get someone on obstructing.

No one deserved to die over obstructing, though, thought Vimes, as he left a pile of ruined golems behind him. Valentine didn’t seem to mind, although Vimes noted that Valentine would sometimes attempt to reason with the enemy golems, entreating, “You don't have to do this.”

The enemy golems didn’t seem to listen to Valentine.

Over the speaking box, Kellogg mocked, _“Sorry your house has been a wreck for two hundred years. But I don't need a roommate. Leave.”_

Sam Vimes didn’t care about some suburban house that wasn’t even his. Spreading through Fort Hagen, Sam Vimes was the creeping frost of nuclear winter. He was hell on ice. He left devastation and silence behind him, like a blizzard.

_“Hmph. Never expected you to come knocking on my door. Gave you 50/50 odds of making it to Diamond City. After that? Figured the Commonwealth would chew you up like jerky.”_

Sam Vimes was an Ankh-Morpork boy. Chew him up? The Commonwealth would have died of plague. Fort Hagen was much like any fort, with a floorplan that had clearly been designed in consultation with precisely zero soldiers. Room by room, Sam saw to it that the fort contained fewer and fewer golems and more and more piles of scrap.

“I am damaged. Kellogg will not be pleased,” one of the enemy golems tried to tell him.

Just how aware were these older model synths? Sometimes, Valentine would try to parley with them, try to get them to run, snarling, “You really want this to be the last mug you see?” and still, the enemy golems did not listen, but then, the mobsters back in Vault 114 hadn’t listened, either, and they were human. The raiders didn’t listen when Vimes had tried to convince them to surrender. Man or machine, no one ran in the Commonwealth. Idiots.

Sam would make Kellogg want to run, and he wouldn’t let him.

Right now, Kellogg continued to mock. _“Look. You're pissed off. I get it. I do. But whatever you hope to accomplish in here? It is not going to go your way.”_

Another enemy golem said, in that tinny voice of its, as Sam clubbed the synthetic life out of it with a shock baton that he’d pulled out of the grip of one of its fellows, “I must report this assault directly to Kellogg.”

Vimes wished one would, really. It would lead him straight to Kellogg. The enemy golems threatened that, though, but they never broke and ran back to their master. So he kept dismantling the occupants of the fort, room by room.

Some doors were locked. The locks were not so fancy as the one on Kellogg’s house. Once the enemies in the immediate area were cleared, and, judging by the sound of metal feet (or lack there-of), no reinforcements on the way, Vimes knelt a moment to pick one. Valentine watched him, craning his head, and when the lock finally opened, the golem detective commented, sounding slightly impressed, “You do that a little too well.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Vimes snapped.

Kellogg’s voice broke in again. _“You've got guts and determination, and that's admirable. But you are in over your head in ways you can't possibly comprehend.”_

The locked room contained a few items of marginal interest and an armoured chest-piece that was better than the full suit of tattered clothing he was wearing. Vimes hesitated only a moment in putting the strange armour on. The thing was…

So everyone knew about those Hubland barbarian women, didn’t they? Concubines for mothers, conquerors for fathers, beauty and brawn in one package where the chain mail left little to the imagination. Vimes had thrown a few of them in the drunk tank. He didn’t know how their armour worked, because it seemed to be scandalous swimwear. This armour was sort of like that, only... 

Vimes knew, when Sybil told him that he was dashing, that she had only been being _nice_ to him, because she’d found him first as a pathetic, bedraggled creature, and Sybil had a large well of compassion for disheveled beasts. He knew bloody well he didn’t have any of that, wossname, animal magnetism. If interesting women were interested in him these days, it was for his title, which wasn’t him.

In any case, if the scraps of chain mail that the barbarian women wore complimented their assets, this armour did the opposite to Vimes, and the way it went on, it didn’t allow him to wear his pants. Valentine watched Vimes strip and put the other armour on, and he observed, “Quite the free spirit, aren't ya?”

Vimes said hotly, “You think you’re so smart? You ever see a barbarian woman knifed in the gut? Happens practically never!”

_“It's not too late. Stop. Turn around and leave. You have that option. Not a lot of people can say that.”_

It was definitely too late. He’d already taken his pants off. Sam Vimes had fought werewolves naked.

More rooms. The sound of laser-fire. The crack of the shock baton against - what was it called? - plastic. Sort of like ivory that was no better than it ought to be.

_“Okay, you made it. I'm just up ahead. My synths are standing down. Let's talk.”_

Sam and Nick had already ended all of the golems in the room in which they were standing, but as he sprinted down the next hallway, he noticed that the golems seemed to have gone dormant, like puppets with their strings cut. He roared, “You could have done that at any time! You made me kill all those others and for no reason at all!”

They could have gone home! Did those golems actually have a home? Possibly, Fort Hagen was their home. Well then. They could have gone out for a smoke! Mr. Nick Valentine smoked, and he was a golem.

“You made those poor, stupid things come at me in waves and waves with laser-rifles when all I had was a bat and a shock baton. They didn’t have a chance!” he continued furiously.

The door slid open, and Nick asked, “Wonder what Kellogg was up to before we dropped in on him?”

There, surrounded by those terminal-things and idling but armed golems, was the murdering scum who’d taken his Sybil away from him, who’d stolen young Sam. Mr. Nick Valentine’s conjecture hadn’t been wrong at all. Sam was about to be wrong, but there was no place in the wasteland for right, no law but the law a man carried within himself, and the law that Sam Vimes carried within himself said that murder was the capital crime.

The balding mercenary had the utter gall to seem amused. “And there he is. The most resilient man in the Commonwealth. Funny, I thought I had that honor.”

Vimes commanded, “You murdering, kidnapping psychopath. Give me my son. Give me young Sam! Now!”

“Right to it then, huh? Okay. Fine.” Kellogg smiled at Vimes. “Your son, Sam. Great kid. A little older than you may have expected, but I'm guessing you figured that out by now. But if you're hoping for a happy reunion? Ain't gonna happen, pal. Your boy's not here.”

Second by second, Vimes held his muscles back, though his tendons felt like they’d snap. His hands, they shook with the need to be around Kellogg’s neck, strangling the life out of him, but now wasn’t the time. Kellogg was an evil man, and he was talking. All Vimes had to do was keep him talking. He had to, for young Sam. “Tell me where he is, damn it!”

Kellogg was confident, like a cat, and twice as proud. “Fine. I guess you've earned that much. Sam’s in a good place. Where he's safe, and comfortable, and loved. A place he calls home. The Institute.”

The Institute, where golems like Mr. Nick Valentine and all of the golems Sam had slaughtered were made. What did the Institute need with Sam’s boy? In Ankh-Morpork, he could understand almost anyone thinking that young Sam meant leverage3 on the elder Sam, the Duke of Ankh. In the Commonwealth, he wasn’t anyone.

“Sod off, Kellogg,” Sam growled.

“Let him go. Your time's done. Your son is exactly where he belongs. He's home. In the Institute,” said Kellogg.

“The Institute? Well I'll find him, no matter where he is. Nothing will stop me,” said Sam, and he looked from Kellogg to synths, keeping in mind that Valentine and his revolver were a few paces behind him. He thought it over: duck down, get Kellog good, let Valentine shoot over him at the remaining synths, who Sam doubted would stay stood down when it all came to blows...

Vimes finally got under Kellogg’s skin, and Kellogg snapped, “God, you're persistent. I give you credit. It's the way a father should act. The way I'd be acting if I were in your place, I like to think. Even if it is useless. But I think we've been talking long enough. We both know how this has to end. So... you ready?”

Kellogg was the one doing all the talking, though. He was gloating. He wanted to see fear; to see his victims squirm. He was putting this off like another drag on one of those California Sunlight Cigars. 

Without a word, Sam took the shock baton across Kellogg’s neck, spun around behind him, and cranked. There was a snap. There was silence.

If anyone had asked Nick Valentine, he would called Kellogg’s death a suicide.

3 The thing about levers was, they went both ways. Try to lever Sam Vimes, and he’d lever you right back, even if all he had was the short end of the stick.

* * *

Her Sam Vimes had kept up a good five years of always reading to their young Sam at 6’o’clock sharp, from the time young Sam had been barely fourteen months old and up until young Sam had been a very solid six years old. Then the railroad got in the way, separating rather than unifying, as her Sam Vimes had gone off on _Iron Girder_ to help the now Low Queen Blodwen Rhysdottir reclaim her throne. That particular diplomatic incident had necessitated a score of missed 6’o’clocks, and Lady Sybil had tried, as she had tried before, to have reading hour with young Sam herself, if his father couldn’t be there.

The first time that had happened, young Sam had been about fourteen months old, and he’d cried and cried, and a miracle had happened - young Sam had heard his father’s voice from over 200 feet away, from the caverns below. Later, when his father had gone away on the railway, young Sam, now seven, had accepted his mother as a substitute reading audience.

Her Sam was gone again, but in a much less understandable sense. He was, in some fashion, inside Hex. Lady Sybil had explained this to young Sam as best she could, which the boy had accepted soberly, and she had settled in to listen to him read. He’d gone through everything of literary merit there was on poop back when he was six, and then at seven, he’d devoured the new literary field of ferroequinology. Trainspotter books were still coming out at a steady clip, but today, young Sam was going over some of his homework reading with his mother.

Sybil and her Sam had gone through a devil of a time finding schooling for young Sam. Many of the schools for boys that were said to be good were mainly just old and stuffy, and when Sybil and Sam would take a walk around a facility, it was inevitable that Sam would slip away from the tour and find a boy who had…

…His arm broken in four places from ‘falling down the stairs’... 

…Bruises of all different colours from ‘Contact Geography’... 

…Been thrown down a well… 

Then her Sam would come back stony-faced and state, “Young Sam's not going here. The only people going here are four constables and a sergeant, to investigate, before I burn this place to the ground.”

He had stalked off to the nearest clacks tower, any discussion of test scores forgotten. Things had then been very awkward, but it was right that they should be awkward. The situation should have been awkward an awful lot sooner. Sam Vimes couldn’t be the first person to notice or even the first person to care, in some dilute dishwater sense of caring; he was just the first person to say anything. Sybil was very proud of her Sam.

The Assassins’ Guild had the finest school in all of Ankh-Morpork, but Sybil didn’t even suggest it to her Sam.

However, Sybil had suggested private tutors for young Sam, but Sam seemed to think that was daft. The boy needed to be about other boys, he said, or he’d become a shut-in. Sam wouldn’t have it.

Eventually, they had placed young Sam at the Frout Academy For Enquiring Young Minds, because the Duchess Susan Sto Helit taught there, and Susan had attended the Quirm College for Young Ladies, same as Sybil. Susan could teach, and more than that, she could properly discipline even a Duke’s son without so much as laying a finger on him. As Sybil well knew, that was one of Sam’s great dreads - that young Sam would grow up _spoiled_ , due to teachers and servants not showing him the consequences of his actions out of fear of his father’s station. As long as Susan was his teacher, Sybil thought all would be well. If Susan ever went back to Sto Helit to resume her duchess duties or when young Sam inevitably aged out of Susan’s class, there would be all the trouble with school shopping again.

 _The Goode Childe's Booke of Faerie Tales_ was the assigned reading, although page 7 was missing entirely from the school loaner copy of the book, and young Sam had informed his mother gravely that Miss Sto Helit had told them that the book was not very accurate, in any case. Sybil listened to young Sam read to her, and after a while, she asked, “Why do you think Miss Sto Helit had you read a book that’s not very accurate?”

“Well, it’s fun, isn’t it? A bit of fantasy,” said young Sam, putting the book down and curling up under his covers. 

* * *

Valentine had shot a fair number of his fellow golems for Sam, who had, once the danger was over, slumped down the floor, held his head, and wept. His wife’s murderer was dead, but he was no closer to finding his son than he had been. His seven year old was ten now. He’d missed three whole years of 6 o’clock. The Summoning Dark was laughing at him.

 _You can sod right off, too,_ Sam thought bitterly. He’d come in wanting to kill Kellogg. He’d killed Kellogg. Murder didn’t get much more cold-blooded than that. Malice aforethought, Mr. Slant might call it.

Valentine perused the terminals in Kellogg’s command center. Maybe he’d find something useful. Sam wasn’t in the mood for the imp word-games that were required to make those machines work. He wasn’t in the mood for anything. He just felt cold.

Eventually, Valentine crouched down next to where Sam was sitting on the floor, and he lightly rested his hand on Sam’s shoulder as he commented, “So, the Institute was the puppet master all along. Damn. Even I don't know where they are, and they built me.”

Sam forced himself up, and he stared at Kellogg’s body. He had no chalk for the outline, and he knew bloody well who the murderer was. There was an older part of Sam that went to work now, the part of him that had grown up on Cockbill Street and had run with the Cockbill Street Roaring lads. He took off Kellogg’s armour and gear and found Kellogg wasn’t even cold yet. Sam also found a strange metal thing embedded in the back of Kellogg’s head, sort of like the stuffing he’d beat out of those golems. He took that, too.

Kellogg’s armour, which was better than Sam’s and also covered more, fit Sam, which was odd, because they didn’t have the same build at all. Sam said, “You don't know _anything_ , Nick?” He was suspicious by nature, and a number of the pieces of this puzzle seemed entirely too convenient.

“Look at me. I'm trash. They threw me in the junk pile ages ago. Just another discarded prototype. Didn't exactly leave me the house keys.” Valentine sighed tiredly. “We're in the weeds, here. Time to take a step back. Bring in some fresh eyes. Only person I know willing to snoop up the Institute's tail feathers is Piper, the reporter in Diamond City. I say we head her way. Talk this through.”

“Piper,” Sam said, narrowing his eyes. They’d met. She wanted an interview with him. He wanted none of that.

“Trust me, that dame knows a lot more than she lets on. And she lets on a lot.” Valentine winked at Vimes. “If I know her, she's done her homework. And we need to talk this through with someone.”

“Urgh,” said Sam, re-checking the buckles on the armour. It really all did fit. Why did it fit? Who wasted magic just to make sure that armour would resize itself to anyone who happened to find it? 

Valentine looked concerned for Sam, which was frankly bewildering to Sam. The people who were concerned for Sam and not concerned _about_4 Sam Vimes was a rather short list. Sybil had been concerned for Sam Vimes. The golem offered, “Look, I know it feels like a shot in the heart, but this case isn't closed. Not while I'm on it.”

Sam nodded, and they headed back out of Fort Hagen and were soon back on its roof. Above them, in the sky, something rumbled, low and rattling. Sam raised a hand to shade his eyes as he watched the…

It wasn’t a noble dragon. Noble dragons were more graceful, and they were smaller, but the sheer sense of menace that the thing radiated was akin. This was more like someone had taken a battleship and put it, against all odds, in the air.

Valentine gazed up at the mechanical monstrosity with shaky awe and seemed to be quoting something as he said, “Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing.”

Vimes’s Pip-Boy tried to tell him something about a radio channel. He did not care about radio channels. They were nuisances. “You know, I…” he stabbed a finger up at the sky, “I’m not going to deal with whatever that is right now. C’mon. Let’s go talk to the Piper.”

At least they didn’t have to pay the Piper.

4 Particularly, concerned about Sam Vimes going spare and burning down Ankh-Morpork.

* * *

There had been something that Nick had very much wanted to discuss, which had the shape of being a long, drawn-out discussion, right before Kellogg’s command center, which was a frankly daft time and place for such a Discussion, so Sam had put it off. Possibly, it was on the subject of the detective’s fee, insofar as Sybil’s murder had now been solved and closed, and they now at least knew who took young Sam and where young Sam had been taken, just not where actually was. So on the way back from Fort Hagen to Diamond City, Sam braced himself, and he finally let the chatty golem talk.

“Hey. Let me ask you something,” Nick tried again.

“Oh, fine,” Sam ceded.

“It's just, with everything that's happened with you, your family,” Nick started. “It's a whole hell of a lot to process. I wanted to make sure you're holding up alright.”

Sam’s eyes narrowed, and he said what he had been thinking, “And why would you care?” Nick clearly did, and he just as clearly had no reason to do so. Nick’s interest went beyond reasonable Nosy Bastard levels that Sam could have understood.

“I just had a hard go with the, uh, transition myself. Took me a long damn time to get a feel for this place,” said Nick, and Sam sort of imagined that yes, someone like Nick would have had problems with the Commonwealth. Carrot’s problems with Ankh-Morpork had mostly stemmed from naivety and taking everything too literally, and Sam couldn’t quite see that of Nick, but perhaps something like. Nick continued, “Thank goodness I found Diamond City. It's got its flaws, sure, but it beats the hell out of anywhere else in the Commonwealth. Course, when I took up there back when, people were just as scared of the Institute as they are now, maybe more.The massacre of the CPG was still pretty fresh in people's minds at that point, and folks were still losing sleep over the Broken Mask. Plenty of people assumed I was just a saboteur, moving in to melt down the reactor or poison the drinking water. But, at the time, they couldn't exactly turn me away.”

Sam clicked his tongue. That was a lot of information he hadn’t asked for, which was always suspect, and Nick had just implicated himself in at least four different cases. No one walked up to a copper and said, ‘hi, people think I might poison the water’, even if Sam was in plainclothes and had no authority here5. Now, Mr. Nick Valentine was, as he had said, a member of a hated minority, and perhaps he just wanted to clear up some misconceptions on that front. Perhaps. He prodded, “They couldn’t turn you away, huh?”

Nick said neutrally, “Because I'd rescued the mayor's daughter. Gal of about fifteen, pride and joy of the mayor back then, man by the name of Henry Roberts.”

Sam entertained the thought that maybe there was some convoluted conspiracy on the Institute’s part, where they would kidnap people and Nick would get them back, and then… well, Sam wasn't sure what that was supposed to accomplish. 

Nick continued, blissfully unaware that Sam was constructing dark conspiracies around his motivations, “The young Miss Roberts decided she'd run off with some caravan hand she'd,” ahem, “known for an evening. Turns out the guy was part of a gang of kidnappers. I didn't even know who I was rescuing, just stumbled on a crying girl and four toughs. I took her home and the Mayor dubbed me a hero, offered me a place in town. Lots of folks protested, said I was a spy, but he wouldn't have it. Taking up in the city was tricky at first, but I never tried to hide what I was and people seemed to warm to that.”

“You took down four guys by yourself?” said Sam, thinking. He could see that, he supposed.

Nick looked amused, and he turned conspiratorial, as if letting Sam in on a secret, “Didn't have to. Back then synths were even more of an unknown quantity than they are today. I told them I was rigged to explode and started going ‘beep, beep, beep.’ Hardest part of that rescue was keeping from laughing as they climbed over each other to get away.” Nick smirked at Sam.

Sam laughed and, despite himself, couldn’t help grinning. “Oh, gods! That’s good. You’re a clever devil, aren’t you? Was it hard settling in?”

“They sure didn't make it easy,” Nick said deceptively mildly, “I started off doing the jobs no one else wanted. I got more banged up being Diamond City's handyman than I ever did living out in the ruins. But I guess folks never forgot I rescued the Mayor's daughter, so they started coming to me when people went missing. Wife runs off with a new paramour and takes the rent money with her? Talk to the Synth. An upset father decides moving him and the kids to Goodneighbor in the dead of night's not the worst damn idea since the bomb? Go get Nick. After a while, the jobs got so backed up, they didn't even ask me to do the handyman stuff anymore.” His expression turned happy, as he recalled how his life had changed. “Hell, I was so happy to do it, it was months before I started charging anyone. I never stopped being Nick the synth, but it was Nick the detective folks came to see. It was about then that things, things finally started feeling normal. It took me a long time to realize that home is where you make it. With some time and effort, this place can be home for you, too. Long story, but I hope it helps.”

That discussion of home sounded… almost like an invitation. Sam wasn’t a vampire, though. He didn’t need an invitation to break in wherever he wanted.

Now, Sam had already heard about the Broken Mask incident in the newspaper, but as they continued walking, he asked about that, too, curious to hear Nick’s take on the subject. Evidently, one of the newer model synth golems, the sort that could pass for human shot up Power Noodles, long before Nick had moved to town. Then, humans realized that synths had stopped looking like Nick and started looking like humans. Nick confessed to feeling rather lucky that the people of Diamond City had let him in the front gate, after that incident.

The thing Sam was sure about, though, was that humans shot up other humans all the time in this blasted wasteland, and Diamond City didn’t bar humans from entering. Nick was almost pathetic in how happy he was when he was only slightly mistreated, instead of being wholly mistreated. It said something about the golem, and it made Sam generically angry in a frustrating way that didn’t have any clear outlet for release. 

The discussion was interrupted by attacking mole rats, which were idiot beasts that were trying to kill him, instead of fleeing like shy, skittish woodland creatures. They didn’t even present a satisfying target for his anger, because they hadn’t done anything wrong. They were just bloody stupid, and now, they were just bloody. Mole rats were very tasty, if properly cooked, but Sam did not know how to properly cook them. There were very few things that he did know how to properly cook. Once the mole rats were dealt with, Sam resumed questioning Nick about the topics he’d mentioned.

The massacre of the CPG was the end of the short-lived Commonwealth Provisional Government. Not long before Nick had taken up in Diamond City, every settlement in the Commonwealth with a hint of clout had tried to hash out an agreement. One synth from the Institute had killed everyone there. 

Sam took some time to consider how dangerous that did or did not imply synth golems to be. Nick was solid in a fight, by his standards, but Sam had to admit that he had high standards for what counted as solid in a fight, when he thought about people he knew, such as Willikins and Detritus and Angua and Sally and, yes, _Dorfl_ …

It really wouldn’t be that hard to kill off a diplomatic delegation, with the proper planning. No, the hard thing would be refraining from doing so, despite having the means. There were so many more creative things that could be done with outright replacing people, and it said something depressing about the Institute that they resorted to such dull, banal violence. Still, Sam filed those later-model synth golems away as something to be wary of. 

5 The problem with Sam having no authority, he was finding out, was that it seemed to turn him into a murdering lunatic. He didn’t like it. The Summoning Dark did.

* * *

_Publick Occurrences_ had a girl hawking papers standing on top of a box outside of it. The girl looked related to Piper; Sam guessed younger sister. She waved a paper at Sam and said, “Free paper to newcomers. If the Institute grabs you in the night, at least we warned you.”

Sam took the paper and said idly, “If the Institute grabs me in the night, I’ll grab back.” That would actually put him right where he wanted to be. He flipped through the paper quickly, wondering if there was any obvious pattern to the Institute kidnappings. Maybe if he just put a big sign on himself saying ‘Kidnap me, Institute’?

The newspaper building was tiny and contained no dwarfs. Piper had a smug grin on her face when she saw who her visitors were. “Well, well, Nicky Valentine walks into my office for a change.”

Nick shrugged and held up his hands. “What can I say, Piper? You, me, and hard luck all seem to run together like acid rain down an old sewer.”

Piper tilted her head to the side and made a face. “You, uh, including your client here in that analogy?”

Sam had been face down in the gutter in the rain. He felt included.

Piper steepled her fingers and leaned back in her chair. “So, you two are finally letting me in on this little case of yours. What's the story?”

Sam recounted, “Kellogg murdered my wife, kidnapped my son, and gave my son to the Institute. I’m going to find the Institute.”

“The Institute? Hoo boy…” said Piper. “I've been investigating these creeps for over a year now. The Commonwealth's boogeyman.” Probably not the sort of boogeyman easily dealt with by a scrap of blue blanket. “Feared and hated by everyone.”

Nick admitted, as he had before, “True enough.”

Piper continued, “Sometimes they snatch people in the middle of the night. And sometimes they leave old synths behind to remind us that they're out there. But to this day, there's one thing nobody really knows...”

Nick finished the sentence for her, “Where the Institute actually is. Or how to get in.”

Piper snapped and grinned. “Exactly. But there's one person who must know, right? The guy who just handed them your son.”

Nick jolted a little and said thoughtfully, “Kellogg. Huh...”

Sam said flatly, “He’s dead.” Inside, he berated himself. This was why a city boy, like him, did not run around the countryside murdering people! Because dead men could not normally be questioned without resorting to dubious wizard tricks, and while he’d seen plenty of magic items in the Commonwealth, including Mr. Valentine’s pink magic sign, Sam had not seen any actual wizards so far and just the one drug-addicted witch.

“Yeah. I knew he wasn't gonna go quietly the moment I saw him...” Nick said, as if he was trying to provide backup.

“So a murderer and a kidnapper gets his brains blown out by an avenging parent.” Piper sighed. “It'd be a great ending if we didn't still have the biggest mystery in the Commonwealth to solve…”

Sam caught Piper’s gaze and corrected, “I broke his neck.” He didn’t use guns. Maybe Nick and Piper could handle a gun and put it down any time they wanted, but it didn’t seem to be that way for Sam. A gun felt as good in his hand as a bottle of whiskey and twice as dangerous.

Nick still appeared to be thinking something over, and he said faintly, “Huh... His brains. You know, we may not need the man at all.” 

Piper looked at Nick as if she thought he’d gone mad. “You're talking crazy here Nick. Got a fault in the ole' subroutines?”

Nick explained himself, “Look, there's a place in Goodneighbor called the Memory Den. Relive the past moments in your mind as clear as the day they happened. If anyone could get a dead brain to sing, it'll be Doctor Amari, the mind behind the memories.”

“Who's this Doctor Amari?” Sam asked. What they were describing smacked of what the wizards politely called Post-Mortem Communications and what Sam would cheerfully, impolitely call Necromancy.

If it found him his young Sam, he was all for it.

Nick said, “I'll let her give you her life story in person. Let's stay focused. Hmm... I guess we're going to need a piece of Kellogg's brain. Enough gray matter to bring to Amari and find out if this is going to work...”

Piper looked disgusted. “Jesus, Nick... Gross! Seriously?”

Nick defended his sudden veer towards supporting the Dark Arts, “I know it's grisly, but what choice do we have? We got no leads. Nothing. That old merc's brain just might have all the secrets we need to know.”

It dawned upon Sam that he had already taken something weird out of Kellogg’s head, on the grounds that a twelve-year-old Sam Vimes would have tried to flog it at a pawn shop. He ventured, “Actually, I think I already have something. Kellogg had this... thing attached to his head.” He pulled it out of his backpack and held it out.

Nick looked at the odd little piece of metal and said, “Cybernetics, huh? We may have just won the lottery.”

Piper looked clearly dubious of this plan. “Whether we're riding this crazy brain train or not, we can't all go running across the Commonwealth. So, who's coming with you?”

Did Sam want to take a reporter who still wanted to interview him or did he want to take a detective whom he knew would have his back in a firefight? That was an easy choice, but he didn’t quite see why he couldn’t bring, say, Codsworth or Dogmeat or Preston with him, if they’d been around, especially given that Nick knew how to summon Dogmeat with a whistle...

* * *

Several graduate student wizards huddled around a stack of print-outs from Hex, sorting through them.

Xian whined, “He’s ignoring Preston Garvey, he’s ignoring Piper… he’s ignoring all the romanceable companions!”

Xian’s family business was in shipping, based out of Bes Pelargic. His parents owned a small fleet of boats, and they’d wanted their eighth son to be a weather wizard, a meteoromancer, to ensure fair winds for their flotilla. Given the unrest in Bes Pelargic after the Revolution, Xian had gone to Ankh-Morpork for his schooling, and he’d become interested in an entirely different sort of shipping. It was the sort of thing that could get him arrested in Bes Pelargic, if the censors decided that his writings were inappropriate, so Xian wanted to get all of it out of his system before he graduated and went back home.

Alf Nealy, who had come from nowhere so far flung, only so far as Dolly Sisters, was at the octarineboard, which did a very expensive job of looking black to anyone who wasn’t a wizard. He was checking a set of calculations or pretending to, at least. Alf speculated, “It’s a shame we were never able to get multiple companions up and running, yeah? Almost had it with Dogmeat. Dogmeat, heh heh…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A: Most fans remember how devoted Vimes was in Thud! and what lengths he would go to in order to be home by 6:00 PM to read to young Sam. As of Snuff, young Sam is doing the reading, himself. As of Raising Steam, there’s a bit where Vimes goes off on his own for a while and is clearly not making it home at 6:00 PM every day anymore. So Vimes is clearly out of the habit of being home at 6:00 PM sharp for young Sam by the end of the series, but he’s Vimes, and he tends to look for excuses to be angry at himself.
> 
> I will also observe that the game implies that Nick thinks he can pick at least some locks, even if he is scripted to fail so that the Player Character has more to do.
> 
> As for Sam's underwear-clad battle, this wasn't the only time in S's playthrough that Sam was naked or near-naked, but if we included all of those incidents, we'd be here forever. Nick (and most of the Companions) have some entertaining dialogue regarding a free-spirited Sole Survivor.
> 
> S: It’s worthwhile to mention the assumptions we’re making about the timeline. Up to a certain point, we use the one suggested in the [LSpace Wiki](https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Discworld_Timeline). After that, we are assuming that Snuff takes place fairly early summer of young Sam’s seventh year (probably not long after his birthday) and that Raising Steam happens the same year, wrapping up in time for Soul Cake Tuesday. Probably the early portions of Raising Steam, the parts that don’t involve Vimes, are concurrent with Snuff. All of this makes for a pretty compressed year, but if you let young Sam get any older than about seven it starts getting harder to justify why Sybil was holding him. Besides, it’s Discworld, time is always a little wonky.
> 
> I blame the history monks.
> 
>  **We love comments of all lengths, and understand the need for low-energy commenting like kudos. If you ever find yourself wanting to give us additional kudos, feel free to leave a comment of an icon or emoji of a heart!** <3


	4. A Mind Full of Wicked Designs * Second Opinion * Disappearing Act

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter songs: [Hey Pretty](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hvkc2yd1YSU&list=PLLEELrwJ-FyotucudE52BnFg6vVn1AGne&index=6&t=0s) by Poe and [Antimental](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edwy_gX-Rr4&list=PLLEELrwJ-FyotucudE52BnFg6vVn1AGne&index=7&t=0s) by Mortiis (warning, random illogical swear words)

_A Mind Full of Wicked Designs * Second Opinion * Disappearing Act_

When they arrived at Goodneighbor, a smoking man walked up to them and mocked Nick with, “Well, well, it's the detective. Tracking down another wayward husband to his mistress?”

Nick said lazily, “Why, someone stand you up?”

The man’s brain clearly struggled to put two thoughts together. “Tryin' that, what d'ya call it? Evasive language, on me?” Then, he turned on Sam and demanded, “Who the hell are you? Valentine's new dick-in-training?”

Sam opened his mouth, closed it, and considered that ‘dick’, in this context, likely didn’t mean what he thought it did but that it was probably still insulting, anyway. “Me? I’m just someone pointing out that you haven’t noticed that other man approaching from that way.” He gestured.

The other man was a fair distance away and appeared to be a particularly ill zombie, perhaps one of those ghouls that Preston had mentioned. The first man completely ignored him and said, “Don't be like that. You just got the look of someone who's in the market for a little insurance.”

“Oh. Inn-sewer-ants. Yes, I know about that. Regrettably,” said Sam.

“Now don't be like that. I think you're going to like what I have on offer. You hand over everything you got in them pockets, or ‘accidents’ start happenin' to ya. Big, bloody, ‘accidents,’” the man threatened.

Sam wanted to ask for his Thieves’ Guild papers. If the man had actually been able to produce them, Sam might have just lost those papers, anyway. It was almost like the nicer parts of the Shades.

The ghoul that he’d mentioned earlier now walked into the conversation and commanded, “Whoa, whoa. Time out. Nick Valentine makes a rare visit to town, and you're hassling his friend here with that extortion crap? Good to see you again, Nick.” He winked at Nick.

Nick said flatly, “Hancock.”

The inn-sewer-ants agent became angry at Hancock, shouting, “What d'you care? He ain't one of us.”

Hancock started friendly and finished it as an order, “No love for your mayor, Finn? I said let 'em go.”

The inn-sewer-ants agent complained, “You're soft, Hancock. You keep letting outsiders walk all over us, one day there'll be a new mayor.”

“Come on, man. This is me we're talking about. Let me tell you something,” said Hancock, and he closed the gap between himself and the inn-sewer-ants agent.

Sam saw it coming, as Hancock put his hand on the man’s shoulder, drew him in, and stabbed him twice. Days… weeks? He didn’t know how long he’d been travelling. Weeks ago, Sam would have stepped in between them, and there would have been arrests all around. Now, he didn’t move.

The thing was, Nick didn’t move, either.

Hancock said to the corpse on the street, “Now why'd you have to go and say that, huh? Breaking my heart over here.” He shook his head and tsked. Then Hancock called to Sam, “You all right, brother?”

“Er, no, I don’t think so,” Sam said, faintly. Had he really just watched a murder in the dim daylight of Goodneighbor and done nothing about it? But, his second thoughts nagged at him, Nick hadn’t done anything, either, and Nick seemed a decent enough sort. Hadn’t Sam even warned the man about the approaching ghoul? Yes, he had. So, his second thoughts finished, this was clearly a suicide.

Sam hated suicides, all the same.

Hancock continued on as if he had not heard Sam’s actual answer, “Good. Now don't let this incident taint your view of our little community. Goodneighbor's of the people, for the people, you feel me? Everyone's welcome.”

Sam made himself say mildly, “Goodneighbor? That what you call this place?”

“That's right. We cobbled this little neighborhood together out of the freaks and misfits that just wouldn't be accepted anywhere else. You'll see. You make enough friends here; you'll call this place home soon enough.” Hancock’s voice turned low and threatening. “So long as you remember who's in charge.”

Sam had to resist the very strong urge to arrest Hancock. He’d do it, too. He’d arrested the Patrician. He’d arrest anybody. Nick seemed to realize that Sam was resisting the urge to do something inadvisable; in any case, and he led him away to the Memory Den.

The Memory Den had a red magic sign. In front of it, there was a functional streetlamp that cut the dark of Scollay Square, casting down a pool of light that illuminated the rubble. The door was a faded red. The inside was poorly lit, which never bothered Sam anymore. Grey cinder block walls clashed with plush crimson velvet drapes. The floor was dirty, littered with bottles and rubble, and the furniture was a mixture of technology Sam didn’t understand and furniture that appeared looted from a fine hotel. The chandelier was unlit. Nick confidently strode up to the receptionist, who was more lounging than receiving. The blonde woman, who wore an entirely too tight red dress, purred, “Well, well. Mister Valentine. I thought you had forgotten about little ole' me.”

Nick took her hand in a courtly sense, kissed it, and looked meaningfully into her eyes as he said, “May have walked out of the Den, Irma, but I'd never walk out on you.”

Irma seemed amused and said, “Hmph. Amari's downstairs, you big flirt.”

The gears of Sam’s calculating mind gummed up. Nick was a synth, a created being, which Sam had mentally classified as an exotic sort of golem. Nick was _nonhuman_. Sam looked at Irma again. She definitely looked human, although she might have been one of the newer model synths that could pass for human. Her dress, er, really didn’t leave much to Sam’s imagination, and he didn’t see any gears pushing against the tight fabric. Yet Nick was flirting with her. How would that even work, he wondered desperately. It wasn’t like Nick… oh, why was he even thinking about it?

Nick led the blushing Sam downstairs, to a grungy laboratory where a woman with short dark hair, who might have been from somewhere in the vast People's Beneficent Republic of Agatea, stood in a white coat. Nick inclined his head toward her and said, “Doctor Amari?”

The woman said, “Yes?” to Nick, whom she clearly knew, but to Sam, whom she did not, she asked, “Well. What is this about?”

Sam hesitated. “You… might be able to do some Post-Mortem Communications?” Witches could be so easily offended, and Nick was calling her ‘Doctor’, but no doctor that Sam had ever heard of could pull memories out of a dead man. Perhaps a witch doctor?

Amari blinked and said, “What!?”

Maybe that hadn’t been as tactful as Sam thought it was. Nick sighed, “We need a deep dig, Amari, but it's not gonna be easy. The perp, Kellogg, is already cold on the floor. I know it's asking for a miracle, Amari, but you've pulled off the impossible before.”

“Are you two mad!?” Amari sputtered. “Putting aside the fact that you're asking me to defile a corpse, you do realize that the memory simulators require intact, LIVING brains to function?”

Sam picked up the phrasing ‘defile a corpse’, elbowed Nick lightly in the side, and hissed, “So I take it she’s _not_ a necromancer?”

Nick ignored Sam elbowing him and entreated, “This dead brain had inside knowledge of the Institute, Amari. The biggest scientific secret of the Commonwealth. You need this, and so do we.” 

Amari hesitated, her expression one of open disgust at the morbid suggestion that Nick and his companion had brought to her laboratory. Then she caved. “Fine. I'll take a look, but no guarantees. Do you... have it with you?”

Sam held out the odd bit of metal he’d pulled out of Kellogg’s head. It looked like jewellery, in a way. Might have been able to get a dollar for it at a pawnshop. Some of the wires definitely looked to be gold. 

Amari examined it gingerly, as if she was afraid it would bite her, and said, “What's this? This isn't a brain! This is...wait… That's the hippocampus!” It didn’t look like any hippo Sam had seen, although the hippos he’d seen weren’t stellar examples of their species. “And this thing attached to it. A neural interface?”

Nick squinted at the device in Amari’s hands and murmured, “Those circuits look awfully familiar…”

Amari said soberly, “I'm not surprised. From what I've seen, all Institute technology has a similar architecture.”

With regards to what was in Kellogg’s head, Sam was way in over his head. “Er… go on… Doctor?” 

Amari speculated, “Mister Valentine is an older generation synth. But, Institute technology being what it is... The brain implant could fit him. But that's... an incredible risk to take. We're talking about wiring something to his brain.”

Nick offered readily, “Don't worry about me, Amari. I'm well past the warranty date, anyway.”

“Oh, Nick…” Sam said, studying the golem detective. The golem detective hadn’t actually charged him anything, despite the mayor’s snide comment about a ‘reasonable fee’, and he’d gone willingly with Sam to murder Kellogg, and now, he was offering to let a witch who wasn’t even a professional necromancer risk his brain. All for Sam and his desperate search to find young Sam. Yes, Sam had rescued Nick from Vault 114, but he sort of suspected that, if Nick had been left there another week or so, he would have found his own way out. What had Sam Vimes ever done to inspire such self-sacrifice from Nick Valentine? Who would do that for another man’s son? “I… I appreciate this, Nick.”

And Nick, oh Nick, just looked at Sam as if he were worried for Sam. He smiled and said bravely, “You can thank me when we've found your son. All right. Let's do this.”

“Whenever you're ready, Mister Valentine. Just sit down,” said Amari.

As he sat down, Nick cracked wise, “If I start cackling like an old, grizzled mercenary, pull me out, okay?”

Sam Vimes just stood there, quietly goggling. Nick Valentine couldn’t be real. He was certainly no Ankh-Morporkian, but Sam had figured that out long ago. Charge up front, abandon case midway, that was the Ankh-Morpork way. The Commonwealth way… Sam thought darkly of the pile of bodies in the basement and the ambush he’d avoided.

There had to be another shoe waiting to drop. Nick Valentine had to have something he wanted out of Sam Vimes. There must have been some sordid secret. No one was that selfless.

“Let's see here…” said Amari, as she slotted the implant into the back of Nick’s head. “I need you to keep talking to me, Mister Valentine. Any slight change in your cognitive functions could be dire. Are you... feeling any different?”

Nick sounded strained. “There's a lot of... flashes... static... I can't make sense of any of it, doc.”

Amari then said a lot of words. “That's what I was afraid of. The mnemonic impressions are encoded. It appears the Institute has one last failsafe. There's a lock on the memories in the implant.”

Sam knelt down beside the chair where Nick sat, both helpless and confused. He asked, “Is Nick going to be okay?”

“Yes, the connections appear to be stable. Hopefully, it'll be as simple as unplugging the implant once we're done,” said Amari, but what she really said was, _I’m hoping I’m right_. She paced, thinking. “But that doesn't get around the current problem. The memory encryption is too strong for a single mind, but... what if we used two?” She snapped her fingers. “We load both you and Mister Valentine into the memory loungers. Run your cognitive functions in parallel. He'll act as a host while your consciousness drives through whatever memories we can find.”

Sam had to think about that. “You want to make a soup of me, Nick’s, and Kellogg’s brains?”

Amari directed, “Just sit down over there. And... keep your fingers crossed.”

Sam Vimes closed his eyes. He had to find young Sam. Kellogg had given young Sam to the Institute. What was a little necromancy, between friends? He was just afraid of what Nick might see in his mind and what he might see in Nick’s. No one was that good. No one. Sam sat down climbed into a lounger that reminded him uncomfortably of the cryo-pod and laid back. After Nick had settled into his own lounger, there was a sharp pain in the back of Sam’s neck. Amari was babbling her magic-science words...

* * *

Sam Vimes was in a strange place, which was not, strictly speaking, a place. There was darkness, but the Summoning Dark was not with him here, which meant that the darkness was not actual darkness and was merely the memory of the lack of light. Shapes sort of like translucent, very flat squid faded in and out of view in the dark. The star-squid would briefly light up with coursing electricity. He teetered along the causeways made by the tentacles of the squid-things, and he wondered what would happen if he fell into the blackness.

Amari’s voice directed Sam to the earliest memory that she could find, and he followed the pathway of electric squid to a shabby apartment room with a woman and a child. Amari warned him that he would be experiencing the memories as Kellogg, which might be disorienting… as if the business with the squid in the void wasn’t?

_“All five states have now signed on, which means that as of this moment, we are all citizens of the New California Republic.”_

California! Like the cigars, Kellogg’s favourite brand. 

Feeling the consummate voyeur, Sam listened to Kellogg’s thoughts rattle about. The old killer had an abusive father, it sounded like.

Sam’s own father had, if Sam put the pieces together, drunk himself to death, no matter what politer excuses his mother made.

So Kellogg had an abusive father, and his mother wanted him to kill his father for him, even giving the boy a gun. She was not a soft woman, and she’d threatened to pull Kellogg out of school.

Sam had taken himself out of school to join a gang. He wandered out of that memory, which was getting him nowhere but despairing over how these people here would hand even children guns. Amari found him another intact memory close to him in temporal sequence, and he followed the glowing path. This whole thing was definitely eldritch, maybe even fulgurous.

There was Kellogg in a kitchen with a woman. He appeared to be trying to cook. Even evil men had to hard-boil an egg now and then. Sam prefered it when his were soft enough to… run. 

The woman spoke of a baby, and the scene swivelled to a crib, and somehow, Sam knew the baby’s name was Mary. Oh, so Kellogg had a wife, Sarah, and a daughter, Mary? 

And he’d gotten them killed.

Sam thought about Sybil. He hadn’t been able to protect her, but… this whole thing was strange. Some old golems thought he was a soldier, but aside from that, no one seemed to know who Sam was. Sybil’s murder had seemed incidental, not at all like the political assassination of a Duchess. As much as he wanted to blame himself, Sam really didn’t think Sybil had been killed over him. It wasn’t his fault. It was some stupid, random killing, and that was worse.

Without his family, Kellogg had been a mercenary drifter. Eventually, he’d been sitting across a table from a woman in a strange white outfit and a pair of synths that looked far more primitive than even the pathetic things in Fort Hagen. Evidently, Kellogg had been causing trouble for the Institute. Contract negotiations had led to Kellogg gunning down both synths.

Sam Vimes’s body strained when he next saw Conrad Kellogg standing in Vault 111. The witch Amari’s sensor readouts were probably blaring klaxons as his immobilized body nonetheless tried to spring forward, fingers outstretched, as if he were a pouncing leopard. 

Kellogg’s thoughts narrated: _“I was now the Institute's main operator in the Commonwealth. If they needed something done, they came to me. It wasn't usual for anybody from the Institute to come along on a mission. So this one stood out. I didn't know then who it was we were grabbing from the Vault. Of course, neither did they. Not really.”_

His muscles contracted and could not budge against whatever science-witchery that held Sam paralyzed. He never warmed, not properly, not even when a nuclear sun beat down upon him, but his blood ran so cold now. 

There was Kellogg and the female kidnapper, the Institute science-witch, and there were Sybil and young Sam, entombed in ice, trapped like lost souls in the frozen lake of the Ninth Hell, _“The eggheads never liked taking orders from a dirty contaminated degenerate like me. But they needed me, and I made sure they knew it.”_

Kellogg looked to where Sam was trapped in his own private Hell, sized for one, and then he looked back as the Institute witch opened Sybil’s pod, where young Sam sheltered against his mother.

“Is it over? Is everything going to be okay?” asked Sybil, and Sam knew that no, nothing was ever going to be okay ever again.

“Almost. Everything’s going to be fine,” lied Kellogg.

Sam wanted to shut down his inner eyes. He had to stop existing mentally in places that he did not want to be. He couldn’t handle this again. His sinews strained, and he felt they might break.

“Come here. Come here, boy…” coaxed the witch.

“No, wait. No, I’ve got him!” said Sybil.

 _No no no_ pounded Sam’s brains, like the constant retort of bullets that never ceased in the Commonwealth, not even in thought, but in a writhing existence that was only

_** NO ** _

“Let the boy go. I’m only gonna tell you once!” commanded Kellogg, and he drew the gun.

And Sybil…

...died.

Sam’s tear ducts were sore with the want of weeping, but paralyzed, not even tears could fall.

“Goddammit! Get the kid out of here, and let’s go…” said Kellogg.

Which god? _Which god?_ **Which damn god?** Sam would climb Cori Celesti and find the bastard responsible.

“At least we still have the backup…” said Kellogg, sparing a second glance for the widower he’d made, for the demon he’d awakened, for the doom he had created for himself.

Kellogg’s thoughts mused, “ _Even then, I knew it was a mistake leaving him alive. I understood that kind of revenge, no one better. But I was cocky enough to assume I could handle some soft prewar Vault dweller, even if he somehow got thawed out. At least I know those Institute bastards will soon get what's coming to them, too. If he could take me out, they won't be able to hide from him for long._ ”

The witch Amari said, “I’m, uh… I’m sorry you had to go through that again. I’ve found another intact memory. Whenever you’re ready.”

There was a moment, and another moment, and who could say how many moments passed? But eventually, the thought, _Ready?_ bubbled up through cracks in the ice. Ready? Yes, Sam had to be ready. He was the Institute’s doom, come to find it. Sam left the ice, but the ice didn’t leave him, and he skittered along the electric path, the way of lightning, until he saw a boy, _his_ boy, appearing around ten or so, on the floor of Kellogg’s home, looking through some old books and magazines.

His frozen heart shattered into a thousand twinkling razor-edged pieces, and Sam Vimes had a chest full of needles. 

“Is that… your son? This appears to be a very recent memory, so… good news, I think,” said Amari.

Kellogg narrated, “ _It wasn't my idea to settle down with the kid in the middle of Diamond City. I thought it was a terrible idea, actually. But it was one of the old man's pet projects, so here we were. Me and the kid like a happy little family. I ended up kind of liking it. A reminder of what my life might have been if things had turned out differently. But there's no going back. I knew it was just temporary, and it would be back to normal business before too long._ ”

Sam Vimes knew well what he had done, but no matter how he summed the tallies - and he had always been quite proud of his ability for sums, learned in Dame Slightly’s classroom - he could not figure out what he could have done to have had his son kidnapped from him and raised by his wife’s murderer and then given to an Institute that slaughtered cities and stripped them for their components and took down fledging governments at a whim. Sam couldn’t think of _anyone_ who deserved that because, when it came down to it, no matter what Sam the elder had done, young Sam had done nothing. So it was with the guiltiest of parents; never was it just for the child to bear the punishment.

And Conrad Kellogg’s little daughter had been murdered for her father’s sins. It was as if the world, for some perverse reason, wanted Sam Vimes to feel bad for Conrad Kellogg, as if the world wanted to shout, ‘Look, you’re both bloody widowers, the world has done you wrong, you’re both rough sorts…’

Sam Vimes refused. He wouldn’t feel bad for Conrad Kellogg. The mercenary had stolen a year or more of young Sam’s life from him in a macabre mockery of family, just to add insult to the murder of Sybil and the kidnapping of young Sam. 

He did feel bad for little Mary and her mother, Sarah, though.

Kellogg continued, “This whole setup in Diamond City was part of some elaborate plan of the old man's. Seems obvious now that we were bait for our friend from the Vault. The timing couldn't have been an accident. That's not how the old man works. I wonder if he outsmarted me in the end. Another loose end tied up.”

Sam would have blinked if he could. Young Sam was… bait? Bait to induce Sam Vimes to kill Conrad Kellogg? Who was the old man? Who was Sam up against? He wanted to grimace. This was a twisty four-dimensional Thud! set crafted by wizards and played by the Patrician against Diamond King of Trolls, with Lady Margolotta and Queen Blodwen clacksing in moves on the secret fifth-dimensional part of the board. His head hurt, his heart ached, and his soul wept.

Another man, dark, as if from Howandaland, and heavily armoured, entered the house, and Kellogg looked up from where he was sitting, idly watching young Sam, gun in hand. Kellogg said, “One of these days you're going to get your head blown off, just barging in here like that.”

“Minimizing my exposure to civilians is a priority…” said the man, and Sam knew, as Kellogg had known, that the man was an Institute Courser, a sort of recent-model Generation 3 synth made for combat. The Courser sounded more mechanical than Nick Valentine, for all that he appeared human. Nick was always wonderfully warm and human in his voice, or perhaps wonderfully warm because he was inhuman. A human would have been more ground down by the world and cynical, but perhaps Nick’s metal was more wear-resistant than a human’s old bones.

“Forget I said anything…” said Kellogg, and Sam remembered how disgusted Kellogg had been by synths. He didn’t think they were people, and there was something at the edge of the memory nagging him about young Sam… “So what’s the big crisis this time?”

“New orders for you. One of our scientists has left the Institute,” said the Courser. 

“Left as in?” asked Kellogg, inclining his head. Young Sam continued playing on the floor, as if it were normal for him to have a Courser speaking of elimination missions to his father figure.

At least Sam had never brought his son with him along to any of his talks with the Patrician, and in any case, he wasn’t the Patrician’s assassin. The Patrician was his own Assassin, and he had Dark Clerks for when his own hands were too busy to be dirtied.

“He’s gone rogue. Name’s Doctor Brian Virgil. We know he's hiding somewhere in the Glowing Sea. Here's his file,” said the Courser, presenting Kellogg with a folder.

“Wow. Some heads are going to roll for this,” said Kellogg, skimming over the folder. “Capture and return or just elimination?”

“Elimination. He was working on a highly classified program,” said the Courser.

“No kidding. One of the top Bioscience boys? Damn,” said Kellogg, and he thought for a moment. “So... I guess you're taking the kid back with you.”

The Courser confirmed, “Affirmative. Your only mission is to locate and eliminate Virgil.”

Young Sam looked away, and then he looked to the Courser and asked, “You’re taking me home to my father?”

The cold rage pounded like a blizzard at the gates. No! What had been done to young Sam, that he didn’t know who his natural father was?

“Yes. Stand next to me and hold still,” said the Courser.

“Okay,” said young Sam obediently, rising from the floor, books left scattered. 

“X6-88, ready to Relay with Sam,” said the Courser.

Young Sam said, “Bye, Mr. Kellogg! I hope I'll see you again sometime!”

Kellogg had the gall to sound depressed as he said, “Bye,” as X6-88 and young Sam vanished from the house like dark lightning.

A teleportation spell. Vimes dreaded those. They tore apart matter into the little thing-ies, the _resons_ , that made it up, and turned the matter into magic, and then the magic turned back into the matter, and the matter was - who could say that the matter was the same matter? Who knows how many times that his young Sam had been ripped apart and put back together? Was his young Sam even his young Sam anymore? Could his young Sam be his young Sam, if he’d spent a year with Conrad Kellogg and now called a man in the Institute his father?

Well, if his young Sam wasn’t his young Sam anymore, Sam Vimes would find him and look after him, anyway.

“Teleportation. Now it all makes sense. Nobody’s found the entrance to the Institute because there IS no entrance,” said the witch Amari. Teleportation was more wizard magic than witch magic, wasn’t it? “Let me pull you out of there. As soon as you’re ready…”

Yes, Sam Vimes was ready to be out of the memories of his wife’s killer. The pod opened with a hiss, and Sam staggered out and promptly fell over on his face, as Amari said, “Slow movements, okay? I don’t know what kind of side effect the procedure might have had. No one’s ever… done this before.”

Too late for her warning, Sam stayed face down on the floor for a while. 

“How do you feel?” asked Amari, more clinical than concerned.

Feeling was not so much the issue, because he was feeling cold. More the issue was that the chequerboard of the floor was starting to look, to him, like a Thud! board set, and he saw a shadowy hand reaching for a piece that looked like Conrad Kellogg as a sullen dwarf. The hand knocked over the Kellogg piece, and in the darkness, Sam could see a smile.

Sam rolled over and stared up at the ceiling. He stared for a while. Then he looked around, slowly. Nick wasn’t there. Sam stood with a start, and Amari said, “Let’s start over… How are you feeling?”

Sam’s thoughts raced. Nick had better not have died in the process of Sam discovering that teleportation was the gate into the Institute! The Commonwealth needed its shepherd of runaways and hunter of lying lovers! Oh, this had better not be like that story about a young dying girl, who was told by an Igor that she needed a new heart or she would die, those stories where she’d wake up after the operation and find that her own betrothed true love had given his heart so that she might live.

Those young girls in the stories couldn’t be Ankh-Morpork girls, Sam thought. An Ankh-Morpork girl would just find a likely corpse in the street and take it to the Igor.

“Nick!” said Sam, agitated, and he picked up Amari before he realized he had done so, and then he set her back down, looking frantically around the room for Nick. 

There was a very odd and awkward pause from Amari, and then she said, “By the way, I unplugged Mister Valentine first. Removed the implant while you were waking up. He's waiting for you upstairs.”

Sam stopped and sagged. Nick was safe. Good. He could answer her initial question, then. “Oh. ...okay. I’m just… cold.”

“That's not surprising. All the synapses in your brain have just been pulled apart, connected to someone else, and then pulled back together. I injected you with a large Stimpak while I was pulling you out. That should ease things. Are you... ready to talk about what happened in there?” said Amari.

“Sin-naps-es? Er?” said Sam, looking at her blankly. “My vices had a sleep, and they got pulled apart?” That was just like witches, pulling apart an unsuspecting man’s vices. Vices were meant to stay clamped down, not be opened up! He hoped that his boozing habit, which had been dormant for many years but could come back unexpectedly if he ever let his vigilance slip, didn’t get mixed up with his sense of humour. That was how the oenophile column in the _Times_ ended up written, he was sure.

_A spirited wine, made more so by the fact that each bottle is haunted…_

Amari looked at him blankly in return. “Are you... ready to talk about what happened in there?”

“Look, I know it’s wizard magic, not witch magic, but I don’t suppose you know any teleportation spells?” asked Sam.

“This is serious! No one outside the Institute could dream of making that kind of technology,” said Amari, with irritation. “Wait...maybe that's it... That memory about Virgil, their scientist who went rogue. If we found him… Where did the memory say he was? The Glowing Sea? That doesn't make sense. No one goes there. Not even if they were desperate.”

“No one? Make it one. I’ll go,” said Sam, who made a habit of going places people told him that he wasn’t supposed to be.

Amari seemed to be pontificating to herself, “What makes the Glowing Sea so dangerous? The name says it all. Radiation. So much that nothing there could possibly live. Nothing... pleasant… Navigating radioactive hazards is nothing new, but the Glowing Sea can kill a man in seconds. That's why it doesn't make sense. Virgil fleeing into that hell. The exposure alone…”

Sam considered that he probably couldn’t just act like he was supposed to be there to trick radiation into ignoring him, which was a shame, because that was a great way of getting into places he was not supposed to be. He pointed out, “The Institute thinks that Virgil is alive enough that he needs to be killed.”

Amari seemed to think that Sam had said something really profound there, which he doubted. “That must be it! He's using the radiation in the Glowing Sea like a shield or a... cloak... a way to throw them off and be at an advantage. If Virgil found a way to survive there, you'll have to do the same, if you're going to follow him.”

“Any suggestions on that?” asked Sam.

Amari speculated, “There are chemical compounds. Rad-X, RadAway. You'd need as much as you could carry. Maybe more. A sealed environment suit would be great, if you could find one. Or maybe... one of those suits of Power Armor? That would be perfect.”

“I have one of those!” Sam said brightly. Then his mood turned morose, as he remembered how the blasted thing ate fusion cores like they were candy. “...right. Er. I thank you for your help, Witch Amari. I’ll be scavenging for fusion cores, then.”

“Good luck, and… be safe,” said Amari, as Sam turned to head back up to collect Nick.

 _Not bloody likely,_ thought Sam.

Upstairs, Nick was sitting on a low loveseat of scarlet, slightly slumped forward, hat brim covering all of one yellow eye and most of the other. Mind preoccupied with where in the blazes he was going to find enough fusion cores, Sam said absently, “Hey, Valentine…”

Nick’s head snapped up, and those yellow eyes fixed on Sam, and someone that Sam was entirely sure was not Nick Valentine said, “Hope you got what you were looking for inside my head. Heh. I was right. Should’ve killed you when you were on ice.”

The shock baton found itself in Sam’s trembling hand. “Kellogg? Is that you?”

_No no no, don’t do this to me, don’t take my wife, my son, and the one man, er, golem who is both good and half-sensible that I’ve met since waking up -_

Nick’s expression and bearing changed, and he looked at Sam as if Sam had asked him something strange. “What? What are you talking about?”

“You sounded like Kellogg just then,” said Sam quietly, searching Nick’s face for any sign of… he didn’t even know what.

No, he knew what. Any sign that he’d have to kill the old detective to get Kellogg to stay dead.

Nick arched an eyebrow, and his glowing eyes darted pointedly to the shock baton in Sam’s shaking hand. “Did I? Amari said there might be some ‘mnemonic impressions’ left over…” Nick shook himself. “Anyway, I feel fine, so let's get going.”

Sam studied Nick, who appeared to be very much Nick Valentine and not anyone else. He didn’t put the shock baton away. He asked carefully, “We have to head into the Glowing Sea. Any advice?”

“Hmm... I'm a synth, so radiation isn't much of an issue for me, but an old suit of Power Armor might just be the guardian angel you're looking for,” mused Nick.

Ah, he spoke of angels, as golems did. Sam put the shock baton away.

Nick stood and added, “That, or you could buy up all the Rad-X and RadAway you can find from any chem dealer who's got it in stock.”

Sam smiled weakly and said, “Let's get going, Nick.”

Nick smiled back, genuinely, and said, “Been one heck of a ride so far. Let's see where it takes us next.”

* * *

As it turned out, the ride took them right back to Diamond City, since Vimes was looking to stock up on Rad-X and RadAway, while Nick pointed out that he had a couple of outstanding cases he wanted to see if he could make progress on. Once the two had made their way to the Valentine Detective Agency’s cramped office, Nick gestured towards his desk, on which sat a plain looking folder. “Been meaning to put Earl's case to bed for a while now,” Nick admitted. “Glad you're up for it.”

Vimes reached for the folder, although he paused a moment as he spotted the newspaper sitting on Nick’s desk. ‘Case Closed on Crime Boss Eddie Winter,’ the headline read. Interesting, but what was apparently a pre-war newspaper would have little bearing on the current case, so Sam picked up Earl’s case file and leafed through the pages. He noticed that not only did Nick have almost supernaturally neat handwriting, his spelling seemed perfect and his approach to punctuation was far more consistent than what Sam was used to seeing in reports written up by Ankh-Morpork Watchmen. He scanned the contents. So an assistant bartender stopped showing up for work. Security refused to investigate, something that made Sam scowl. The locals assumed it was the Institute, but both his boss and Nick suspected otherwise.

While Sam read, Nick turned towards his secretary. “So what's your take on the case, Ellie?”

“On Earl?” she replied. “Well, he didn't have any enemies, that's for sure. Someone would have to notice you're alive first.”

“And Earl didn't exactly have the charisma to inspire any crimes of passion,” Nick replied thoughtfully. “So what's that leave us?”

“I don't know, Nick. It can't be the Institute... right?” the secretary looked at Nick uncertainly.

“Hmm. Guess we'll just have to see,” Nick replied as Vimes put the folder down. 

“So he worked at the Dugout Inn, right? Might as well check in with his employer while we’re in town”

Valentine followed Vimes towards the other side of town, and for a moment, Sam wondered why Nick so often let Sam take the lead, even here, in Diamond City, the golem’s home turf. His musings were cut off, however, as they passed a food stand in the middle of the market that was being run by a strange, bulky golem. 

“Hey, gimme a sec,” Nick said, heading towards the noodle stand. “Gotta check in with a friend.”

The other golem spoke in an unfamiliar language that definitely wasn’t Morporkian, but sounded like it might be related to one of the languages he’d overheard from the People's Beneficent Republic of Agatea. Nick replied with a friendly, “How's the noodles game, Tak?” 

The noodle golem, Tak, answered in the same language he had spoken before. In fact, it sounded suspiciously like the same sentence. While Sam couldn’t make it out, Nick seemed to understand, and he answered, “That so. Well, so long as you're staying out of trouble.” 

Nick listened as Tak spoke once more, and again the words sounded the same, but Nick smiled. “Good. I won't tolerate anyone mistreating the only other robot in town I can stand.” With that, he turned and caught back up with Sam. “Thanks, I appreciate you waiting up.”

Getting Earl Sterling’s house key from Vadim Bobrov went easily enough, although it had been all Sam could do to hold himself still when Vadim had joked that he had killed a man to get his bar. A man comes in to investigate your employee’s disappearance, and _that’s_ the first joke you use on him? Granted, the case had been Valentine’s, but he and Nick had obviously arrived together. Even as Sam accepted the key, the bartender attempted to talk him into purchasing moonshine. His pitch, such as it was, was interrupted by Nick himself, who snapped, “Vadim, we've been through this. I'm not going to be your guinea pig... again.” Apparently even a golem’s patience had limits, or at least this one’s did.

In Ankh-Morpork, it used to be standard procedure when an illegal still was discovered that the Watch would investigate, taste the alcohol, and then either shut the distillery down or require that they go legitimate, depending on whether the alcohol was any good. To be fair, the procedure was still more or less in place, although Sam’s tasting days were long over. Ankh-Morpork had no problem with people distilling their own spirits. The city was more concerned with making sure it was properly taxed, and, somewhat more significantly, keeping track of the buildings most likely to suddenly explode.

Based on Valentine’s comments, the Dugout Inn wouldn’t have made the cut.

By questioning the brothers who owned the inn and Scarlet, their waitress, Sam was able to determine that while Vadim was fond of Earl, neither his brother Yefim nor Scarlet seemed particularly fond of him. Both also mentioned him talking about getting a ‘new face’ at the Mega Surgery Center. Not too long ago, hearing about that would have been a source of outright alarm. Not too long ago, he had called in a veterinarian to tend to the ruler of the Ankh-Morpork because he didn’t trust the doctors in the city to actually keep their patients alive. 

Then Sam met his first Igor and hired one not long after. After that, he met Dr. Lawn and funded the Lady Syb free hospital, and eventually, Vimes became used to the concept of _competent_ doctors and surgeons. But here in the Commonwealth, Sam had yet to meet even a single Igor, and he didn’t have a good handle on the skill level of what doctors the Commonwealth did have. These people, however, seemed confident enough to try for cosmetic surgery from one. 

Vimes decided to continue the investigation in Earl’s house since he now had the key, and he started to search the living room while Nick checked the storage and sleeping area. As they searched, Nick observed, “You know, for all the talk, I'd put the chances of this being an Institute snatch job somewhere between zero and none. Just think about it.” 

Sam glanced up. “I have been, but I haven’t figured the pattern for what the Institute considers a ‘likely target.’”

Nick clarified. “Earl Sterling, local _assistant_ bartender. Why not nab the bartender himself? Lord knows Vadim samples his own wares enough that some weird behavior wouldn't make anyone bat an eyelash.”

“So joking about being a murderer to the people investigating his employee’s disappearance _doesn’t_ qualify as ‘weird behavior’ here?” Sam asked as he crouched down, reaching for a yellowed scrap of paper on the floor. He picked it up, and looked over the receipt. “Mega Surgery Center,” he murmured. Then he handed the scrap of paper over to Nick and observed, “Yefim and Scarlet both mentioned he’d been talking about going there, too.”

Nick accepted the receipt from Sam, frowning. “I think we’d better go have a chat with Doc.”

* * *

Ponder had checked and double-checked and triple-checked his figures and mathematical proofs. He had made graphs. He had even made diagrams. Ponder did not like his conclusion, and he did not like the people who would probably like his conclusion.

So Ponder sought out a second opinion, which was itself a fraught thing. No wizard liked to admit his own uncertainty. He wasn’t going to ask any of the students who were always around him by the dozens, because the matter was entirely too sensitive. Most of the faculty would simply seize on the opportunity to try to assert that they had one over on Ponder, that he was coming to them for advice, like a beggar with pointy hat in hand.

Thusly, he went straight to the top, to the Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully, who knew he had something over every other wizard and was cheerily confident of that fact. What Ridcully had, at the current moment, was the fact that he was lapping some other faculty members that he had somehow convinced to race him out in the garden. He boomed, “Now look, gentlemen, I haven’t even broken a sweat - ah, Mr. Stibbons! Come to join this invigorating sprint?”

Ponder had been sighted, and he resisted the urge to duck behind a topiary, instead approaching the Archchancellor with his manila folder held like a riot shield. “Erm. Not as such, no, sir. I was just hoping that you could… er… double-check something for me, it’s not that I’m unsure about the result, it’s that…”

Ridcully took the folder from Ponder and ran off with it, leafing through the folder as he tromped through the garden. Ponder hurried after him, trying to collect the papers that Ridcully discarded as he ran. Ridcully shouted, “This is a lot of silly figures, isn’t it, Mr. Stibbons? I don’t suppose you have any pictures in here, you know, some sensible runes, maybe a graph or, if you were feeling really daring, a ritual octogram.”

Ponder felt out of breath already, and he wheezed, “Uhm, sir, if you’d just turn to page seven plus one, you’d see a comparative Pareto rune chart…”

Ridcully was now far ahead of Ponder, but he was easily heard at any distance, “You’ve got bars and lines on the same graph, that’s just daft, man!” More pages were discarded behind him, and Ponder wildly dodged and weaved to try to gather the papers.

Then Ridcully halted and stared at one page in particular. He stabbed at it with a finger, and he turned back to survey Ponder, who was still grabbing up stray parchment. He demanded, “Where did you find this sign, and has it been in the dark at all?”

Ponder took several long, breathless moments to catch up with Ridcully and managed, “Uh… uh... “ He looked at the offending sign. “...oh. That is a four-dimensional slice transposed onto a two-dimensional plane of a Fourier matrix transformation of an anomalous subset of the Commander of the Watch’s morphic field, sir.”

“No, it’s not,” Ridcully sniffed. “It’s dwarfish mine sign. Has it been in the dark at all?”

Ponder was sure he was blue in the face, and he bent over slightly, resting his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. “Uhm. But… that’s what it is, sir? And… I suppose it’s been in the dark? I mean, I had it in that folder…”

"No good,” Ridcully said flatly, and he snapped his fingers, and he set the page on fire, which made it very bright indeed.

Elsewhere, due to the Law of Conservation of Energy, a flame went out. Unfortunately, the flame that went out was in the office of the wizard Avegeor, who, by candlelight, had been on _the_ brink of a major breakthrough in targeting teleportation spells. Unfortunately, when the light went out, he shortly found himself on, instead, _a_ brink and falling off it to his doom, in the Ramtops mountains.

The ashes of the page falling to the ground, Ridcully waved his hand airily, and he continued on lecturing Ponder, “That was the dwarfish mine sign for the Summoning Dark, a nasty little piece of work. Millions of years old quasidemonic entity of vengeance. Now, where’d you find that rascally thing?”

Ponder sighed and rephrased as simply as he could, “In Commander Vimes, sir.”

Ridcully shook his head and tsked, “I’d hoped it was out of him. Ah well.”

Ponder goggled, “You knew Commander Vimes had a… quasidemonic entity in him, sir?”

“Happens to the best of us! Actually, probably because he's one of the best of us. It needs a suitable host.” Ridcully rubbed his chin. “Anyway, he’s been fine for years, so I reckon that’s all right, then.” He touched his nose. “Now, I wouldn’t go spreading this about, Mr. Stibbons. Might be a touch of panic among the masses, you know, our Commander of the Watch being just a little bit possessed.”

Ponder had gone to Ridcully precisely because he did not want to spread this information about. He did not, however, point that out. Stopping Ridcully once he was going was more difficult than stopping a locomotive. There was something to that, some law of inertia. A Ridcully in motion continued in motion at a constant speed without stopping… “That’s not the only entity entangled in his morphic field, however, sir -”

“Oh, is something else possessing him?” asked Ridcully, flipping a few more pages. Then he frowned as he paused on a different sign. “Don’t know that one. I’d check out a book on dwarfish mine sign, if I were you, Mr. Stibbons.”

Ponder sincerely doubted that Ridcully would check out a book, but the suggestion was actually a good one. He wondered if any of his students spoke dwarfish. Surely, one of them did. Extra credit assignment on what that second, unknown sign meant? That might do. Even if there wasn’t a book on it yet, he was the Reader in Invisible Writings. “But about the Summoning Dark, sir. You said it was a quasidemonic entity and that Commander Vimes is only a little bit possessed. What happens if, er, he gets bit… more possessed?”

Ridcully considered that and shrugged. “It’s a vengeance spirit. I daresay all the hells would break loose. Oh. Also. Wretched thing that it is, it tends to burn through its hosts in a matter of days. They go completely Bursar and die frothing.”

Ponder took the remaining papers and the folder back from Ridcully, and he looked at another of his graphs, one which showed that each time the game forced Vimes’s hand in something needlessly violent, that the morphic field subset that Ridcully was dubbing the ‘Summoning Dark’ grew stronger. Where was the threshold where Vimes would flip over from being only a little possessed and become fully consumed? Ponder didn’t know. What he did know, though, was that he had another graph that showed that the second, unknown morphic field subset was weakening.

* * *

The door leading into the Mega Surgery Center was locked, although Doctor Sun, who worked outside and handled the non-cosmetic cases, suggested that Doctor Crocker was probably in the cellar. The locked cellar that, Sam couldn’t help but notice, had a large trail smear of blood right outside it. Getting the key from Doctor Sun was somewhat more difficult than getting Earl’s house key had been, but the doctor relented with a warning that Sam and Nick weren’t to touch anything. 

As it turned out, there was very little in the cellar Sam particularly wanted to touch. Blood all over the table, the chair, the floor, the _wall_ , and there was Doctor Crocker, addressing something - or someone - on the floor by the name of Earl, and talking about correcting “our little mistake.”

“Stop!” Vimes shouted, charging towards the doctor, although he was the one who stopped, wide with horror, as he saw the dismembered body scattered on the floor by the doctor’s feet.

“You’re not supposed to be down here,” complained the doctor as he drew a pistol. “But that’s okay, I can fix that. I can fix anything.” He looked like he was about to level his gun at Vimes, but then hesitated.

Vimes strained against himself. The shock baton was in his hand before he knew it, and he shook with the effort of not swinging it. Let that man raise his gun another inch, a half-inch, a quarter, let him make one wrong move… Finally, Vimes forced the words, “What. Did you. Do,” out through his lips.

“What did I do? I didn't do anything,” Crocker gasped, his tone frantic. He looked around nervously. “It was Earl! It was Earl who didn't want to be happy! Good patients get a nice, new face. Bad patients bleed all over the floor because they want to screw up their surgeon's life!”

Something about the doctor’s frantic, nervous behavior caused something to click in Vimes’ mind. He was on some sort of drug, or… what did these people call them? ‘Chems’? Jet, maybe. 

_It doesn’t matter._

It didn’t matter. He was still a murderer. The shock baton shook. These people didn’t even have a justice system, did they? Would there even be a point to bringing the doctor before security?

_There’s no point._

The point was… Crocker was a murderer. But then, since waking up in the Commonwealth, so was Sam Vimes. But maybe he didn’t have to be one here and now.

Sam’s hand stopped shaking. He said, voice quiet and cold, “You’ve killed a man. Put the gun down.”

“Let's not do anything rash,” cautioned Nick, and Sam wasn’t sure who he was addressing.

“I... I did it, didn't I?” Crocker answered, as if only coming to that realization now that it had been pointed out. “I killed a man. Oh god. There's so much blood. So much blood all over me!” He opened his hand and the gun tumbled to the ground. Instead, he pulled a syringe from his pocket and, before Vimes could close the distance, injected himself with the contents, gasping, “I… can fix… anything!” Then he fell to the floor, lifeless.

 _You practically killed him, anyway,_ whispered a voice in his head, but it was sour, sulking.

 _But I didn’t,_ he thought back.

“What's going on here?” demanded Doctor Sun, who had entered the cellar behind Vimes and Nick. “I think you owe me an explanation!”

Vimes spun on the intruding figure and snapped, “No, you owe _us_ one! You were covering for him!” he pointed, accusingly. 

The doctor looked around the room, confused. After a moment, he seemed to put things together. “That's... Earl Sterling's body, isn't it? Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew he had gone through with the surgery…”

“And you didn’t do a damned thing about it?” the Sole Survivor snarled.

Doctor Sun slumped. “You're...you're right. I should've known Doctor Crocker wasn't in any condition to continue practicing medicine. I should've known he killed Earl.”

It was a confession, of a sort, but it was the sort of should-have’s, could-have’s one heard from any person who was in a position to see the signs of something gone wrong but didn’t. Sun really hadn’t known, although he probably should have paid closer attention. He wasn’t an accessory, just an everyday idiot.

The doctor sighed. “Please, just go. I'll be informing Diamond City Security. Everyone will know what Doctor Crocker did to Earl.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” Vimes warned. 

Sun nodded. “This is my surgery. I'll be the one to set this right.”

Sam glanced at Nick, and Nick gave a faint incline of his head to indicate his agreement. With that, the two left Doctor Sun in the cellar with the remains of Doctor Crocker and Earl Sterling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Post-chapter notes: S: As I mentioned, I somehow managed to run out of fusion cores with Baby’s First Power Armor right outside of the Red Rocket where you usually stash it. This is the justification I need for Sam to decide, “Oh, I’m going to need a _lot_ of those things,” and to spend time doing other things while gathering fusion cores (not to mention that, thanks to me losing some of the armor pieces when Codsworth rebuilt Sanctuary, I didn’t even have a complete suit at this point).


	5. Invisible Writings * Devil’s Iron * End of the Trail

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter songs: [Take me to Church](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVjiKRfKpPI&list=PLLEELrwJ-FyotucudE52BnFg6vVn1AGne&index=8&t=0s) by Hozier and [Whose Line Is It Anyway games: Film Noir](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_IImfpAIcI&list=PLLEELrwJ-FyotucudE52BnFg6vVn1AGne&index=9&t=0s) by Graham de Wilde

_Invisible Writings * Devil’s Iron * End of the Trail_

Vimes and Valentine had nearly made it to the agency when something else caught Nick’s attention. “Hey, hold on a moment,” he asked Sam before cautiously approaching a young couple. “Excuse me. I just wanted to stop by, offer my services again.”

The dark-haired woman gave Nick a vicious glare and stepped back from him, while the man moved to put himself between the synth and the woman. “Oh no,” she spat out. “You get the hell away from me, Synth! I'm not telling you anything about Buddy, just so you can snatch him!”

Sam clenched a fist and took a step nearer to Nick. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he demanded of the woman, “Can’t you see he’s trying to help?”

Nick, however, lifted a hand to try and calm Sam. To the couple he said sombrely, “I'm sorry you feel that way. But if you ever change your mind, I'll be more than happy to help you bring Buddy home.” Then he looked back at Sam, expression sorrowful but guarded. “I guess we should move on, then.”

The pair were silent for the rest of the walk back to the Agency, Sam stewing in his anger but trying to contain it. What good would starting a fight do Nick, anyway? Especially so soon after the both of them had been found at a murder scene. They entered Nick’s tiny office, and Ellie glanced up. “So, you two find out where Earl Sterling ran off to?”

“We found him alright,” Nick replied grimly. He and Sam explained to Ellie the whole affair.

She sighed. “I’m sorry you two had to go through with that. Here,” she added, handing Sam a pile of caps. “Sounds like you earned it.” 

Sam shifted uncomfortably and looked between Nick and Ellie. “I’m not… really sure I did,” he answered awkwardly, but Ellie didn’t seem to hear him and instead moved on to the next topic.

“I can't guarantee it'll be any brighter, but we did have another case lying around, if you're interested. You remember that one, Nick, the case from Marty?”

“I do,” Valentine replied, settling into his desk chair. “Some looney scheme to make off with a statue of a grasshopper or something. You're welcome to page through it if you'd like. It's in the folder on the cabinet.”

Vimes picked up the folder, which mostly seemed to contain a holotape. As he picked it up, Elle observed, “Marty was Nick's partner. Emphasis on the ‘was.’ He must've been some kind of desperate to come to us for help after all this time.”

“Marty and I never exactly saw eye to eye,” Nick observed, leaning back in his chair and glancing at Sam over his shoulder. “Mostly because he was usually passed out on the barroom floor.”

“I can see how that would make it difficult,” Sam answered before slamming the tape into his Pip-Boy. The imp inside recited the tape’s contents in an unfamiliar voice.

“Nicky, you old bucket of bolts, it's Marty. I know it's been a while, but I came across a little mystery I thought might get your circuits firing. You remember that ugly grasshopper statue on top of Faneuil Hall? Turns out it's got a note in it. A note, written by the son of one Shem Drowne. I don't expect that name means anything to you, but the guy was a coppersmith, way back when folks did shit like that. Apparently, this note leads straight to the old guy's stash. I don't know what's in it, but I'd sure like to know if it's still there. I'm gonna go do a little recon of the hall. If you decide you wanna get the team back together, you let me know.”

“Faneuil Hall?” Sam asked as he tried to enter the location into the Pip-Boy. Unbelievably, Sam found himself missing the imp-powered technology from back in Ankh-Morpork. While he could understand wanting to hide the imps behind a screen, at least with the old style you could sometimes get results by arguing with the device. Finally he succeeded. “I think there was something else around there I wanted to look into, anyway.”

On the way out of the Diamond City, Vimes had to pause to keep from being run over by a group of children rushing out of a building that was marked with a handwritten ‘school’ sign. They were followed by a golem of a similar make as Codsworth, an elderly man with a mustache and a worn suit, and a member of Diamond City Security. While the Security guard locked up the building, the older man thanked the golem for her help. “I'm glad you're here,” he added.

The golem, who, unlike Codsworth, spoke in a feminine voice with an accent that sounded Quirmian, replied with surprise, “You... you are?”

“I... what I meant was... It'd be impossible to handle all the kids by myself,” clarified the man, who sounded suddenly nervous. “You're really an... invaluable part of the school.”

The golem’s tentacles drooped as she answered in a disappointed tone, “Oh... right... Thank you.” She turned and almost ran into Vimes. “Oh dear,” she exclaimed, startled. “I am so sorry…” and then she trailed off as she seemed to realize she didn’t recognize the person she had nearly floated into. “Ah, a new scholar come to join our beautiful city! Let's test your math skills. What is twelve times fifteen?”

Sam’s eyes widened in panic, as he hadn’t been expecting a quiz on his way out of Diamond City. He had once been very proud of his ability to do sums, but put on the spot, he found himself mentally scrambling for the answer. Five and twelve was sixty, right? Then… “Uhm… one eighty, right?”

“That's right!” the golem enthused. While she spoke with Sam, the older male teacher headed toward the Power Noodles stand in the center of town. “I see your parents raised you with a respect for your education!”

“Well, mum tried,” Sam answered warily, on guard lest he be assaulted with more math questions. 

It seemed that Sam was, for the moment, safe, as the golem had other words in and on her mind. “Family. It is important, yes?” 

Sam nodded. This tangent seemed somewhat safer ground. 

The golem continued, “This thing called ‘love’ I hear the children talk about. I think they need that to learn.”

“It certainly helps,” Sam agreed. “At least, the lessons they learn with it are better than the ones they learn without.” The ones who went without seemed more likely to have to learn things later in life from the likes of Sam Vimes.

“I see,” the golem sounded thoughtful. “I have one more question before you leave. It's not another quiz. I just... don't get to talk to many adults. This ‘love’ I hear about. Do you think you can have it for someone, even if the two of you are very, very different?”

What, like a Watchman from the gutter and a high-born lady? Or a man raised by dwarfs and a werewolf? A human and a goblin? Or human and a dwarf? Or a dwarf and a troll? The list of wildly different pairs Sam had personally encountered was long enough, but when one added in the ones he’d heard of from other sources… “Oh, absolutely. No question in my mind at all.”

“I... Thank you,” replied the squid golem. “You have helped me make up my mind about something.”

Sam inclined his head. “Well, good luck,” he replied. He glanced back at Valentine, who seemed rather pleased about something. “We should get going,” he said, then started walking.

* * *

As Vimes and Valentine made their way east towards Faneuil Hall, Valentine asked, “You got time to talk now?”

His voice had a slightly stern edge, prompting Vimes to glance towards the golem and ask, “Something wrong?”

“What?” Nick asked, glowing eyes widening in surprise. “Oh, no, no. We've just been traveling a while now, and I figured there hasn't exactly been equitable distribution of information. I've gotten a decent glimpse into your dirty laundry, but you still don't really know a whole heck of a lot about me. I figured I'd offer to balance the board. So, there anything you want to know?”

Sam hesitated as he considered the question. He didn’t feel that the golem had been less than forthcoming, but he was forced to admit that he found the detective fascinating. And of course, there was the fact that Nick had been made by the same fae-like organization that Sam was hunting, so he started there. “What can you remember about the Institute?”

Nick tilted his head and thought for a moment. “It's all pretty hazy from back then, but now and then I get glimpses,” he admitted. “Life inside the Institute... they keep you isolated. A single test chamber was my whole world for years. And someone was always watching. Then one day you wake up on the other side. And that's it. They've cut you loose. Welcome to the Brave New World... with such people in it.”

“Oh, gods, Nick, I’m sorry,” Sam murmured. At the Tanty, they gave even the convicts who were too dangerous to transport so far as execution canaries to sing to them and keep them company, and the convicts usually didn’t last for years. Solitary took a toll. Their hearts often gave out. Keeping a good person like Nick utterly alone, without even a canary for company, was despicable. 

They walked in silence for a moment, long enough cause Nick to prompt, “You still there?”

Sam blinked out of his reverie. “Huh? Oh, uhm. So you want to tell me about yourself. Just. Do that. Tell me about yourself.”

“Well. I know I'm a synth, authentic Institute handiwork,” Nick shrugged. “But I'm still mechanical, not bioengineered like the fancy synths giving everyone the willies these days. I get tune-ups now instead of check-ups.” This part, Sam already more or less knew, although the language was in places strange. But he still interpreted it as ‘golem made with technology rather than divine magic,’ and the newer kind of synth parsed as, ‘golem made with technology out of flesh and blood to appear human’. 

“But my memories,” the synth continued, “my personality, they're all lifted from some cop who volunteered for an experiment back before the war. They scanned his brain and copied it onto the hardware that runs between my ears. Don't know why they chose to make a robot based on some pre-war cop instead of a math genius or a bioengineer. But hey, maybe that's why the Institute tossed me in the garbage instead of turning me into one of their people snatchers.”

Sam stopped and held up his right hand. “Hold up. So your mind comes from before the war?” The Commander wracked his memory. The Ankh-Morpork City Watch had trained coppers who wound up all over the continent, and while Sam hadn’t met all of them, he would have expected to have heard of a detective of Nick’s caliber from someone, assuming the original was half so competent as the golem. Sam knew plenty of people with names like Nick or Nicolas or Nikos or similar, but a family name like ‘Valentine’ stood out. Sam was sure he’d never even heard of it before the Diamond City’s mayor had pointed him towards the detective agency. 

Even more disturbing, however, was the fact that Nick didn’t seem to know the name ‘Sam Vimes’. While Sam had never sought out fame, he certainly had it. People he had never met swapped stories of him, and the Times sent out news and pictures and even blasted editorial cartoons of him to every place within reach of the clacks or the Post. Just where in the hells was Nick from, if he had never heard of the Commander? For that matter, while Sam had figured out that the Commonwealth couldn’t have been the remains of Ankh-Morpork, he couldn’t tell where he was relative to his home, either. Someone had gone through an awful lot of trouble to drag him an awful long way and stash him in that Vault, but just how far away were they if that golem detective with pre-war memories had never heard of the Commander of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch?

Valentine, for his part, misinterpreted Sam’s question. “Sure did,” he said, failing, for once, to notice Sam’s discomfort, “which meant, when I finally ended up out here, it was quite the rude awakening. I remember waking up one day in a garbage heap, a body in tatters and a head full of memories belonging to a man who'd been dead for 200 years. Suffice to say it was a confusing couple of weeks.” 

The synth continued to reminisce about his earliest post-Institute memories, even as Sam wracked his own brain over Nick. “Folks didn't really know much about synths back then, so when I finally ran into people, they mostly treated me with caution rather than hostility.” The golem smiled fondly as he continued. “But the kids, they weren't afraid. I think his name was Jim. The first person to actually speak to me after I got the boot from the Institute. My first human contact in this world. Grilled me for an hour. Once they'd seen I wasn't going to hurt anyone, the other folks in the neighborhood came out to ogle the mechanical man. It eventually turned into a pretty swell soiree. Local mechanic even gave me a once over, free of charge. Those people, they treated me like a human being. I've been trying to return the favor ever since. It's a surprisingly rare trait out here sometimes.” Finally, he looked at Sam. His smile widened, and his voice grew warmer. “Something I've noticed you got a fondness for. Part of the reason I've stuck around this long.”

Sam shook his head, bringing himself back to the conversation at hand. “Nick, you… misunderstand me. I’m not trying to treat you _human._ Humans… we’re just people. I just know better than to think that _only_ humans are people, though I’m really bloody embarrassed by how long it took me to accept that little fact. Eventually even I figured it out. I treat you like a _person,_ Nick, because you obviously are.” 

Nick hesitated for a moment, as though uncertain how to respond. Finally, he settled on, “Well, I expect you're about as bored as can be listening to me rattle my skeletons. We should probably keep going.”

Sam hesitated and blinked. Had he really sounded _bored?_ Nick made a good point, though. They still had a long way to go.

* * *

Ponder huffed back into the laboratory and pulled from a manila folder a diagram of a circle with five vertical lines through it. He asked loudly, “So, does anyone speak dwarfish?”

Chatur, Xian, and Zinon looked at each other. They were all multilingual; Ponder had heard them speaking languages he couldn’t even identify. But it was Alf who tentatively put up a hand and said, “A bit of street dwarfish, sir. Makes it cheaper to get magic items repaired at the dwarf shops, y’know, if you can read the prices in dwarfish. Plus, if I’m going for a bit of rat kip, I want to make sure it wasn’t sourced from near the University.”

Rats near the University had a distressing tendency to turn talkative, and Ponder could understand not wanting to eat something that might talk back, although he really didn’t understand why Alf would ever want to eat rat. The University had wonderful cafeterias! The buffet was a work of legend! He handed Alf the piece of paper with the sign, and he directed, “This is a dwarf mine sign,” probably, “and your assignment is to tell me what it means.”

“Erm, sure thing, sir,” said Alf, scratching his head as he looked at it. “I’ll have a look around the library.” 

* * *

The two managed to creep in close enough to the mutants patrolling Faneuil Hall for Vimes to get the drop on the Suicider they had with them, but unfortunately his shock baton wasn’t up to the task of taking it down in one hit. Before the super mutant could trigger his bomb, however, a man in a yellow fedora and trenchcoat, the same man Sam had seen once before, appeared from behind a ruined wall, shot the Suicider, and vanished once more.

“You again!” Sam exclaimed, while Nick shouted, “That was him! The Stranger!”

“The Stranger? You know about him?” Sam asked, but Nick didn’t seem to hear, and instead he just continued searching for the other man.

“He was right here!” Valentine yelled, frustrated. “Where'd he go?”

There wasn’t any more time for questions or for searching, because the whole affair had drawn the attention of the remaining super mutants.

Fighting their way through Faneuil Hall was difficult going at first, particularly the large, open, balconied room on the first floor. Getting to the stairs on either side meant opening himself up to being shot at by the mutants on the opposite balcony, but without a gun of his own, Vimes was forced to dash for it and hope, while Nick tried to lay down cover fire. It got easier once the mutants were cleared from one balcony, and easier still when they were able to move through the balcony doors into the stairs on the other side. From that point on, the two were able to creep along silently and take their opponents by surprise. If he could catch a mutant off-guard, Sam could usually take it down in only two or three hits, and if he couldn’t, Nick was there to finish it off. Still, it was tough going. “Goodness,” Nick remarked as they crept through what looked to be an office. “Did Marty really try and get through all this on his own?” At least they found a fusion core in the building for their troubles.

On the roof, they found the body. “Hmm. Guess Marty never quite made it,” Nick mused. “Don't worry, pal,” he finished somberly. “We'll close this one out for ya.”

Sam scrambled up the roof for the building to grab the grasshopper while Nick searched for an easier way down than going back through the building. When Vimes grabbed the copper sculpture he found it was hollow and contained an ancient piece of paper. He scanned the note and groaned. “Great. It’s in old-timey Morporkian,” he grumbled.

Nick looked up, confused. “What’s that?”

Sam started messing with his Pip-Boy as he walked down the roof to where Nick had found some scaffolding within jumping distance. “It says it’s buried with him on the banks of the river. I’m trying to see if I can find it in this blasted imp-ma- okay, there.” Then he looked at Marty’s body and grunted. “Looks like if we want to close out your partner’s case, we’ll have to go grave robbing.” He jumped down to the scaffolding and shrugged. “Well, I guess as long as the current owner doesn’t object…” Sam wasn’t about to steal anything from an active zombie, but he never did see the point of leaving useful things in the hands of any of the dead who couldn’t make use of it.

* * *

There were no zombies. There were some feral ghouls, but none of them seemed to be the rightful owners of whatever might be in Shem Drowne’s grave. This was made particularly obvious by the fact that the grave was still occupied by its owner, or at least his skeleton. There were also a few bars of precious metals and a rather nasty looking sword accompanied by a note. Sam read the note aloud. “Fear not, Though Devil's iron makes this Blade, only he who Wields can make it Wicked.” He frowned. “He wrote a note to future graverobbers?” he asked, confused. Sam wondered how that would work. Did he prepare the note before his death and ask to be buried with it, or did he write it as a means to pass time in the grave? If the latter, what did he use for lighting? For that matter, where did he get the pen and ink? When one employed an assortment of undead, these all became valid questions.

Finally, Sam put such musing aside - it was fairly obvious that Drowne himself wouldn’t be answering - and took the sword. Since his baton seemed to lack a non-lethal setting - or he somehow had forgotten how to end a fight with a capture - he might as well use the sword instead.

That done, Sam decided to look into something that had caught his attention back before he had entered into the subway leading to Vault 114, where he had found Nick Valentine. Right outside that subway station had been a metal disk inserted into the ground with some odd markings on it and the start of a red line. The line looked ancient, but the markings on the disk had appeared newer. Those were nearby. The two were more or less caught up on Nick’s cases, and Sam still had a lot of scavenging for cores to do. Why not see where the trail led while they were looking?

* * *

“I don’t see why we can’t just do a multidimensional LaPlace transform,” said Chatur, with regards to methods of turning the pure narrativium Sam Vimes who was running in a simulation that danced across Hex’s eldritch ant-circuits back into a solid flesh and blood Sam Vimes who could resume his very important job of shouting at people who weren’t wizards as Commander of the Watch.

“‘Cos LaPlace transforms are Quirmian, and we don’t hold with them here,” said Alf.

“LaPlace transforms are Klatchian! We had them a hundred years before those lobsters stole them off us. Of course, we call them _al’makan_ transforms,” Chatur sniffed. He knew his mathematics. He came from a long, proud line of mathematicians, a line which had thrown a wizard out as a sport. Chatur could have stayed and trained as a wizard in Klatch, which had its own excellent wizarding tradition, although they called them enchanters, but his interest in mathematics had led him astray to Ankh-Morpork.

In his area of Klatch, most city folk received an excellent mathematical education, and if one required a great deal of figuring done, it was simple enough to hire young, unmarried women very cheaply to act as computers and then fire them if they married. They were replaceable. In Ankh-Morpork, which had a rather shakier educational system, being a computer was a skilled position with some job stability for any gender, and perhaps in part that lack of easy computational power had led the lazy Ankh-Morporkians around to an entirely excessive answer for their computational needs: Hex, who could perform trillions of calculations per second. Chatur was sure something interesting could be done with trillions of calculations per second! Perhaps all of the interesting things. Thus Chatur had come to Unseen University to see Hex, and thus he’d been dragged into this odd little simulation project. These wizards used Hex for the silliest of things.

The Brotherhood of Steel insignia on Chatur’s desk was in no way silly.

“Don’t hold with those, either,” said Alf. “Now, a multidimensional Zed transform, that’s a solid bit of work, it is. Could at least check the stability of the filters.”

“We already know the stability of Commander Vimes’s morphic field is poor,” reminded Ponder. He pointed to the octarine board, where he had been charting out the dominance of three different aspects of Vimes’s morphic field. Chatur didn’t know what the two subsets were, and Ponder wouldn’t talk about it, but the one subset was getting stronger, and the other two were getting weaker, that much was clear. All three components, however, were degrading. The simulation was gradually but steadily destabilizing the very fiber of Sam Vimes’s being.

Zinon posited an ethical element to the degradation. The simulation was, necessarily, simplified. Most enemies were simply dealt with by killing, when in real life, the options would have been far too numerous to code: running away, persuading otherwise, intimidating, bribing, seducing, arresting, betraying to a third party, disarming… most of those options came up at least sometimes in their simulation, but they didn’t come up consistently. Alf agreed; everyone knew their Commander Vimes wasn’t a killer, not even a killer for a good reason like a hero in the wilderness, and the strain of role-playing one was clearly getting to him.

However, they would have to rip apart the game itself to reduce the amount of violence it contained and doing that would shred Sam Vimes in the process. He was just going to have to tough out some quest solutions he found distasteful. At least Archchancellor Ridcully enjoyed the shooter aspects of the game, calling them ‘jolly good’, and Ridcully had a great deal of say where research funding went.

“So we should get him out sooner rather than later,” said Chatur. “We’ll just make use of Parseval’s theorem. The two multidimensional signals should be the same, so it should portray the energy conservation of the signal.”

Hex wrote:

+++ Stability is inadequate for extraction. +++

“But he’s only getting worse,” Ponder reminded, “and there’s no way to fix it.”

+++ There are nonzero ways of inducing field stability. +++

“Look, if we can’t even get multiple companions working, there’s no way we could patch in a nonviolence overhaul,” argued Chatur.

+++ A nonexistent field is stable. +++

“That’s not an acceptable option,” said Ponder, who slumped down on a desk with his head on his arms.

“It’s the narrative, isn’t it? He won’t give up until he has resolution,” posited Zinon.

+++ 99.9999% stability predicted if 0010c64a quest stage 1710 achieved. +++

Ponder looked up and read what Hex had scribed. “So we have to wait until he’s advanced at least that far in the storyline to get him out, and in the meantime, we hope that his morphic field doesn’t implode on itself? Wonderful. So we can’t even explain to Commander Vimes what’s going on...” He paused and didn’t say more.

* * *

Sam Vimes checked some notes he had jotted down. Then he looked up at the disc of metal embedded in the wall with its rotatable outer ring. He scowled and checked his notes again. “Wait. Please don’t tell me their secret code word is ‘Railroad’,” he said, disgusted.

Nick peered over Sam’s shoulder. “All right, I won’t tell you.”

Sam rotated the outer ring, bringing each of the letters in line with the arrow in turn. Finally, as he lined the letter ‘D’ up with the arrow, a section of the wall slid aside. Sam sighed, disappointed. 

Sam walked forward into the darkness, Nick following close behind. Before he could reach the spot where the hallway opened into a larger, unfinished room, however, he stopped, held up a hand, and stepped back. He leaned in and said into Nick’s ear, voice as soft and uncarrying as he could make it, “Three ahead, armed. Some sort of light source; they’ll try to use it to blind us, ruin our night vision.” Before he stepped forward again he turned his head away and narrowed his eyes, trying to minimize the impact of the sudden bright light that he was sure would follow.

Just as Sam predicted, a bright light turned on, directed at him and the synth behind him. “Stop. Right. There,” demanded a woman with orange-brown hair in a dirty yellow shirt who stood on a raised platform at the other end of the room. To her right was a thin woman with dark skin holding a minigun that looked far too large for her frame, while to her left was a man in a blue shirt and a cap who kept a pistol leveled at Sam and Nick. 

The woman in the center continued, “You went through a lot of effort to arrange this meeting, but before we go any further, answer my questions. Who the hell are you?”

Sam kept his eyes lowered, trying to judge the distance between himself and the platform. “You first,” he answered, almost cheerful.

“In a world full of suspicion, treachery, and hunters - we're the synths’ only friend,” she replied proudly. “We’re the Railroad. So answer my question.”

“Saw the line, was curious about where it went,” answered Vimes shrugging, his vision having now adapted to the point where he could look her in the eye. Of course, she might suddenly cut the light, hoping to bank on having ruined his ability to see in the dark, but he was certain he could adapt faster than she could. 

“And you just happened to guess the password to the secret door?” the woman asked doubtfully.

“You spelled it out on the path!” Sam exclaimed, exasperated.

“It’s clear you’re not with the Institute,” she observed.

“Damned right,” Sam growled, interrupting.

“But who told you how to contact us?” Behind the woman, another figure entered the room, but she didn’t seem to notice his arrival yet. 

“I just bloody told you! You have a line pointing to your door, and I’m a nosy bastard!”

“I see,” the woman answered, apparently willing to accept the answer the second time, although she looked none-too-pleased. As she spoke, the new arrival walked up to stand between her and the dark-skinned woman, a man with dark hair and darker glasses. Something seemed familiar about him. “I’m Desdemona,” the woman finally introduced, “and I’m the leader of the Railroad. And you-” at this point, she finally seemed to notice the new arrival. “Deacon! Where’ve you been?”

“You’re having a party. What gives with my invitation?” the new arrival, apparently named Deacon, asked. 

“I need intel,” Desdemona replied. “Who is this?”

“Wow! News flash, boss, this guy is _kind_ of a big deal out there,” said Deacon. 

Sam scowled, suspicious, as he thought back over the faces he’d seen in the last few weeks, possibly months. “You’ve been watching me,” he growled.

“It’s not like that, chief,” Deacon replied. “A lot of people know about you. The Railroad owes you a crate, hell, a truckload of Nuka-Cola for what you did to Kellogg. He was our public enemy number one!”

“So you’re vouching for him?” Desdemona asked Deacon.

“Yes. Trust me, he’s someone we want on our side.” Both Sam’s scowl and suspicion deepened. Clearly, then, this newcomer wanted something from him. Granted, this was some sort of Secret Society, so at the very least, all of them probably wanted Sam not to reveal their location. On the other hand, the fact that they viewed both the Institute and Kellogg as enemies was a mark in their favor. 

“Well, that changes things.” Desdemona finally turned back towards Sam and Nick. “So, stranger, why did you want to meet with us, anyway?”

Sam sighed heavily and lifted his left hand to rub his nose. Hadn’t he answered this question twice now? Finally, he seized on something Desdemona had said earlier. “Look, you said something about wanting to help synths earlier, right?”

“You know what a synth is, right?” the woman asked.

Sam stared. He turned around and looked at Nick. Then he looked back at the woman. Finally he deadpanned, “No clue. Why don’t you tell me about them?”

Desdemona responded as if she couldn’t see Nick standing there at all, explaining, “They are synthetic humans created by the Institute. So close to real people that the distinction is meaningless.”

“Probably because they _are_ real people,” Sam growled. Synths were clearly just a new kind of golem, and Sam had long ago realized that golems were as much ‘real people’ as humans, dwarfs, or trolls, despite their constructed origins.

Desdemona, for her part, didn’t seem to hear Sam. She continued, “The Institute treats synths as property. As tools.”

“You mean slaves,” Sam clarified. 

“Exactly. So we seek to free the synths from their bondage. Give them a chance at a real life. So I have a question. The only question that matters. Would you risk your life for your fellow man? Even if that man is a synth?”

“It’s my oath to pursue evildoers and protect the innocent. That applies whether they’re built or born.” Granted, the last time Sam took that oath, it involved a lot more brackets and commas, but the idea remained the same.

“Well said,” Desdemona replied approvingly. “But right now we don't have time to train up a new agent. There are, however, other valuable ways you can contribute. And in turn we can help you. See Deacon for details. You're free to go.”

So after all that, they were just going to let Sam wander right back out the way he came? Sam snorted. It seemed unlikely. Still, he needed ways to keep himself occupied until he had the supplies he needed to seek out Virgil, and if he could both be a thorn in the Institute’s side and free a few slaves in the process, so much the better. Sam approached Deacon, who had walked down the stairs to the platform to meet him. “Hope you didn't mind the reception. When you tango with the Institute, you got to be careful when someone new gets on the dance floor.”

One thing Sam had already begun to notice about the Commonwealth was that the people there used metaphor a lot more freely than they had when Ankh-Morpork was still standing. Of course, no one was around to enforce the old laws against baseless metaphors, but then, Vimes himself had never bothered to enforce those particular laws himself, given that he was more prone than the typical Morporkian to use them himself.

Sam grunted. “If anything, you people seem a bit too trusting.”

“We know we're all on the same team,” Nick noted, although whether he was responding to Deacon or to Sam’s observation was unclear.

“Exactly,” Deacon agreed with Nick. “Kind of killed our chance at a friendly first impression, though. But it's all good now. I vouched for you. Nobody got shot. Still, I would consider it a close personal favor if you didn't sell us out to the Institute. Thanks.”

Sam crossed his arms. “All right. So why _did_ you vouch for me, anyway?”

“In our little outfit, it's my job to know things. And with everything you've done it's clear you're capable. A dangerous enemy. And, I'm betting, a valuable ally.”

So because Sam hadn’t seemed to be against the Railroad, Deacon wanted to make sure he was for it? Vimes supposed that made sense, though for a Secret Society, these people still seemed a little too trusting. The Commonwealth as a whole seemed strangely split between people who wanted to kill Sam on sight and people who trusted him just as swiftly. Sam wondered absently how the latter group even managed to survive. Surely it couldn’t just be something about him that engendered that sort of trust!

On the other hand, while Sam was both a shifty bastard and, by that point, a murdering lunatic, he agreed with the goals of the Railroad. “I’ve got no intention of selling you out,” he admitted.

“That's what I want to hear,” Deacon replied, relieved. “So Dez wants me to make you a ‘tourist'. That's what we call someone who helps out with the odd job here and there. What a waste. I'm just going to come out and say this: the Railroad needs you.”

“I’m listening,” Sam answered tersely. Perhaps Deacon would finally get to the point?

“I got a job. Too big for me. Just perfect for the two of us.” Sam looked between Deacon and Nick, confused by the intel gatherer’s sudden inability to count to three, but Deacon just continued speaking. He started to warm to the subject, turning on the charm like a salesman, which instantly made Vimes all the more suspicious. “You help me out, we turn a few heads, and then Dez invites you into the fold. Then if you get into a bind and need help, your buddies in the Railroad got your back.”

“All right, then, what’s the job?” Sam asked, eyes narrowed.

“So up front, the only thing I'll say is it's going to be a wild and dangerous ride,” Deacon grinned, as if these were selling points. “But probably nothing new for someone like you.”

Sam snorted. So he had to agree to help to even learn what he was helping with? And yet… “All right, fine,” he grunted. And to think that moments before he had been thinking that the Railroad were being trusting idiots. It looked like that sort of thing was contagious! 

“Perfecto,” Deacon answered, grinning broadly. “Let's meet up at the old freeway outside Lexington. I'll fill you in once you get there.” 

Sam frowned. That location meant nothing to him, but he lifted his left arm and checked on his Pip-Boy. He pointed to a spot on the map. “That the place?”

“You got it,” Deacon agreed.

“Other side of the map,” Sam observed. “It’ll be a bit before we can make it.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye out for you!”

* * *

As they headed back out through the church under-tunnels, Nick said quietly, sounding somber and a little bashful, “Hey. You, uh, got a sec?”

Sam was somewhat concerned about ferals, since he wasn’t entirely certain they had taken care of them all on the way in, but he supposed they could talk. He shrugged, “Something about the Railroad?”

Apparently not. Nick said, “I wouldn't normally bother ya with this sort of thing, but... well, I know I can trust you at this point.” Could Nick, really? Could anyone trust Sam Vimes? Sam Vimes wouldn’t trust Sam Vimes, he knew that. “See, my personality, it's all based on this pre-war cop, fella by the name of Nick Valentine. Guy volunteered to get his brain-scanned before back before the war. For as long as I can remember, I've been getting these... flashes.”

Sam still thought that was odd on several levels, not the least of which was that someone had decided it was a good idea to put the ghost of a copper in a golem. A wizard had done this, clearly. It took a wizard to achieve that lack of common sense. Still, Sam was guiltily glad that someone had put the ghost of a copper in a golem, because it meant that, rather than being alone in the Commonwealth or stuck with the idealistic but fatally naive Preston Garvey, Sam had someone with him who could hold his own as Sam searched for fusion cores, RadAway, and RadX.

Nick continued unsmilingly, “Memories of places I've never been. Things I've never seen. Memories of Nick's. They're not bad. They're just… They're just this inescapable reminder. That I'm not the person I think I am. That I'm not a person at all. I'm just a machine, pretending to be human.”

Sam gave Nick a wry, pained smile and said, “You don’t need to be human to be a person. Some of the best people I know aren’t human. You don’t need to try to be human. You’re already doing better than most humans just by being yourself, Nick.”

“That's easy for you to say. You don't have someone else's life trapped in your skull,” snapped Nick.

Sam made himself carefully stone-faced, and he hissed mentally at the Summoning Dark, _Not. One. Word._ Then he said mildly, “I might relate more than you’d know. What kind of memories?”

Nick looked a little apologetic, as if he was sorry for bringing up the matter, and admitted, “Everything. Old cases. Old loves. I've found myself running background on cases only to realize everyone involved's been dead for 200 years.”

Maybe some old dwarf coppers knew what that was like. Some golem coppers certainly could, in theory, although golem coppers hadn’t been around that long, back before Sam had been frozen. He’d hired the Watch’s first golem himself. 

Nick waved a hand airily as he continued, “Don't get me wrong. I know I'm in Nick's debt. These memories, they've kept me alive.” So that was where that uncommon situational awareness came from. “Nick was a hell of a cop, a guy with good instincts, and a good heart. I always counted myself lucky they didn't load me up with some ex-con or whatever type might volunteer to let folks tinker with their gray matter. But it's thanks to Nick that I pass for human. Why I get to live cushy in Diamond City and every other synth is shot on sight. I know I got it good, but... my entire life I owe to Nick.”

Not so long ago, Sam thought, he probably would have been one of the ones advocating shoot on sight. Oh, how he’d resisting having a werewolf in the Watch, only aquiesing because he thought he’d be retiring. How he’d resisted having a vampire - and he’d been sort of right, there; Sally really was a quadruple-agent. Though he’d also been wrong about her, since she was also a good copper. Now, he said, “It’s not that you ‘have it good’. It’s that your entire species is being treated wrong, so you feel like you have it good when someone hands you a scrap instead of realizing that half a plate of excrement is still half a plate of excrement, even if it isn’t a full plate.”

Nick, though, got a little heated as he said, “Everything that makes me who I am - my judgment, my speech, hell, even my name - they're his. And I can't do a damn thing about it because without them... without them I'm nothing. A shell. All I want is a life where I have something I can call my own.”

Oh, if only Nick’s cocksure air under fire or on a case could translate to a little confidence when it came to himself! Sam snapped, “You’re not nothing! You've already built a life for yourself, Nick. You've got the agency. A home. Friends. Anyone with any sense in Diamond City loves you, and the folks, who don’t, like Myrna…” His expression turned dark and stormy, and he trailed off.

Would Sam have handled any of this half so well, if it had been him, he wondered? If one day, Vetinari had told Vimes that he was going to have the wizards scan his brain because of all the things that Vimes had seen and how they were, he grudgingly had to admit, affecting him. Sam wasn’t a fool. He knew normal people didn’t try to drown themselves in whisky to the point where they woke up in the gutter, and even if he didn’t do that anymore, he also knew normal people didn’t vividly hallucinate about lizards and the sun dying while someone else tried to explain the game of crockett. They weren’t as damn jumpy, and perhaps that was their loss, but all the same…

So, if Vetinari had ordered him to a brain scan by a wizard and then he’d woken up on the rubbish heap as a golem, Sam Vimes would have… yes, he’d have gone spare. He would not have, in any shape or form, handled it nearly so well as Nick Valentine had.

Nick smiled in that ruefully self-deprecating way of his, and he said, “Heh. I mean, you're not wrong...” he shook himself. “You know, I'm just going to need some time to think on this. I appreciate you hearing me out. You're - you're a real good friend.”

Sam despaired that Nick couldn’t find better. He deserved better. Then they fought that next batch of ferals that Sam had been sure were just around the corner.

* * *

“He didn’t even pick up Hancock as a Companion!” said Chatur, looking over Hex’s transcripts.

“The Sole Survivor’s being played by the Commander of the Watch. I suspect his Sole Survivor takes a dim view of people who murder other people in front of him,” said Alf. “Putting aside the whole drug addict issue.”

“And I bet he’s not even going to find Curie, let alone recruit her. Same with Cait and MacCready. All he wants to do is drag around on the main quest and solve mysteries,” Chatur continued. He looked over the transcripts again. “I guess he might wander into Paladin Danse.”

“I’m never going to figure out if the Lover’s Embrace perk is working properly,” grumbled Xian.

“I could write a modification that makes Nick Valentine romanceable. It’s not like the Sole Survivor is spending much time with anyone else, and if you really want to check the Lover’s Embrace perk, that might be your only shot,” offered Zinon Elias, who was from Ephebe.

Xian seethed, “The Sole Survivor isn’t good enough for Nick Valentine!”

Alf Nealy was from Ankh-Morpork and had grown up with the Night Watch being a useless laughingstock that no one could depend upon for help and had, through his teen years, seen how the city had changed with the Watch, starting with the day that the Dragon King was arrested. Now the Ankh-Morpork Watch was the finest police force on the continent. He protested, offended, “The Sole Survivor’s being played by our Commander of the Watch! The man who once arrested the Patrician for treason, who helped Captain Carrot arrest a dragon, and who stopped a war between nations by arresting _two_ high commands! They say he killed a werewolf with his bare hands, and that he can't be corrupted, won't be turned, never took a bribe. You’re saying _he’s_ not good enough for a video game character?”

Xian appeared to critically consider those qualifications as a matchmaker might in determining if two unmarried people might make a good match for each other. He sniffed, “Well, I suppose, but only a modification, you understand? I couldn’t hold with Nick Valentine being romanceable in the basic game. Some of the things those other alpha testers did with their Sole Survivors…” He grimaced. “Lady Rust actually managed to get a Disdain to Hatred speech out of _Dogmeat_ , and we didn’t even code for that!”6

“It’s true that none of the other alpha players really made their Companions like them enough that the Lover’s Embrace perk was ever going to come up,” Chatur admitted. “Fr’instance, Lord Robert Selachii kept beating his Companions.”

Zinon picked up a quill and started drafting out the lines of a modification on a piece of parchment, with the intent of later typing it into Hex once he was sure he had the code correct.

Alf added dubiously, “Thing is, I doubt it’s going to go anywhere, even if Zinon does write that modification and get it working. They also say Sam Vimes is straight as an arrow.”

6 ”Ruff! Ruff ruff ruff!” ***growl*** “Ruff ruff!”

* * *

They were back above ground when Nick said, “You know, that whole business with Doc Amari and Kellogg's memories. It got me thinking. It's just... there's still some Nick Valentine history I've been wanting to put a bow on for a while now. I could use a hand, if you're willing to take a crack at it.”

Nick had admitted to running background on cases that were 200 years old. This could be anything, Sam thought. Still, maybe he could poke at it as he hunted for fusion cores, RadX, and RadAway. He asked, “What kind of history do you mean?”

“This one’s straight out of the archives. Once upon a time in the land of Boston, there lived a king of organized crime. Eddie Winter. He was a bad man who did a lot of bad things,” said Nick. 

Sam snorted. He didn’t care for ‘once upon a time’ stories.

Nick continued, “Hurt a lot of innocent people. But he knew the end was coming. So he sealed himself inside a personal shelter, located underneath the sub shop he used as a headquarters.”

“A sub shop?” asked Sam, puzzled. He may have been aware of the the Going-Under-The-Water-Safely Device, because both Fred and Nobby tended to gossip, but he didn’t know what a submarine was.

Nick looked at Sam blankly, like he wasn’t sure how to respond to that. He ahemed awkwardly and continued, “The story gets even more twisted. The arrogant bastard wanted to cheat death. Live forever... So he could come out of that shelter someday, into this brave new world. Sound familiar? Only Eddie didn't want to be a frozen banana. No cryo sleep for him. No, he invested his money in some sick, crazy radiation experiment.”

Sam growled, “I didn’t ask to be put in a cryo pod! And I bloody well didn’t ask to be trapped helplessly in a cryo pod while my wife was murdered and my son kidnapped in front of me!” 

“Get over yourself. It ain't always about you,” Nick snarled back, fixing a withering yellow glare on Sam, who was frankly stunned.

He couldn’t remember when anyone had ever talked to him like that. Vimes had gone from being gutter rubbish to the leader of a competent police force with very little speed-up in between. When he’d been a boozer, he’d had no self to speak of that people might tell him to get over, and as the Commander of the Watch, he’d had a… reputation, about his temper, that dissuaded certain comments from being made. Had Nick really just said that to him?

The golem was continuing, anyway, “Now listen to the important part. Eddie Winter went and turned himself into a Ghoul. Two-hundred years before it was fashionable. Hell, he was probably the first one. And I'm convinced that he's still locked inside that shelter. Safe and sound. Ready to come out and begin his evil reign all over again. I'm going to find him and kill him, so that never happens. You in?”

Sam was still trying to process that Nick had told him to get over himself because it wasn’t always about him. It certainly seemed that way, with all these random strangers dumping their problems on him, even as he tried to deal with his own personal problem of young Sam’s kidnapping. But. Nick Valentine had his own life… didn’t he? And Sam had uprooted him and dragged him around the Commonwealth, all for Sam’s own personal problem, and he hadn’t even paid Nick, and he’d also kept Nick away from his own work. Was it really that unreasonable that Nick was asking Sam for a little help on a case?

Then Sam’s ears caught up with his brain, and he froze, staring fixed at a point on the wall behind Valentine. Valentine was asking Sam to help him track down and murder a man, just on Valentine’s say-so that the fellow was bad.

Sam Vimes had done the exact same thing to Nick Valentine, with regards to Conrad Kellogg.

He said weakly, “Why, er, get your hands dirty, Nick?”

Sam knew bloody well there was no justice system to speak of; criminals were put into unmarked graves by Diamond City Security with no trial. If they found this Eddie Winter and dragged him back to Diamond City, there wouldn’t be due process. There would only be Danny Sullivan shooting Eddie Winter, not for any particular crime, but just because he was a ghoul. They would be pawning off the murder on someone else. Thinking about it that way, killing Eddie Winter seemed, grudgingly, like the better option, what with the chance of Winter escaping in transit, anyway. Sam’s face screwed in a grimace, as he thought about the Watchmen who had been killed when Stratford had escaped.

Nick looked crumpled, as if someone had reached inside him and crushed whatever he had that passed for a heart. “I've got memories. Of a... of a girl. My girl. They're not really my memories, I know that. They're Nick's. But the girl... she was real.” His gaze searched Sam, despairing, before Nick hardened to steel. “She was beautiful, and innocent... And Winter killed her. Now he's got to pay the price. So, knowing that... are you in?”

Sam winced. “Now Nick, you know that’s unfair. You know I’m a widower,” and, he added silently, Nick knew what Sam had done to his wife’s murderer. “I… I’ll help you find the evidence you need to wrap this up. I - I can’t help you more than that.” He shuffled his feet and looked down at them.

 _He helped you kill Conrad Kellogg. Isn’t fair fair?_ said the Summoning Dark.

 _I’m not a killer,_ said Sam back, dabbing at the wetness of his eyes.

The Summoning Dark dripped scorn like burning vurm blood, _And Sam Vimes is an honest man, straight as an arrow._

“You're a good man,” said Nick, which Sam didn’t think was true at all, “Now... I know where Winter's vault is. But the door is sealed with a complex numerical code. Lucky for us, Winter's arrogance knew no bounds. Back in the day, he recorded 10 holotapes, incriminating different criminal associates. On each one, he hid a single number. We find all of those holotapes, we get all the numbers. We get all the numbers... we get the code. And then we get Winter. I've been putting together a file on this one for a while now. There's a pair of holotapes in here worth listening to, including one of Winter's that I managed to snatch from the Cambridge Police evidence lock-up before getting swarmed by ferals. Just need to find the other nine and bring 'em to me.”

“I, ah… I suppose if you did get swarmed by ferals recovering the one tape, you might want back up on the others, yes,” Sam said faintly, looking at the case files and tapes that Nick had dumped into his hands. The case notes were written in Nick’s neat hand:

Then he silently slotted the holotape into his Pip-Boy, and he listened:

> Eddie Winter holotape 1
> 
> Message to Johnny Montrano
> 
> Johnny, Johnny, Johnny. You fat, lazy piece of shit. I knew, I KNEW this arrangement was too good to be true. Let's join forces with the North End! Bury the hatchet, work mutually against a common enemy! Well you put the nail in that coffin, huh boy-o? What did you have to do, Johnny? Huh? What was your job? Sit in your car, on the corner. Keep your eyes open. If you see a uniform, you get out, walk down the street, knock on the door, and let the fellas know there's trouble coming. Easy as pie, right? I coulda got a 9 year-old from the projects to do it. But no. In the interest of Irish/Italian relations, I give the job to you. So what happens? Nothing. Nothing happens. You sit on your fat ass dribbling cannoli cream onto your third chin. You watch. You WATCH the uniform blow months of planning, all in two minutes. Congratulations, Johnny. You got me. You and your pals sure put the screws to old Eddie Winter. You should tell this funny story to your little girl, when you tuck her in at night. In that corner bedroom, upstairs, pink wallpaper, little house on Prince Street. Ha ha.
> 
> Eddie Winter, signing off

Sam didn’t know what Irish/Italian relations were, but he could recognize that two rival gangs had tried to ally and that Montrano’s gang hadn’t warned Winter’s gang when the coppers had come sniffing around and that this lapse of confederacy had led to Winter threatening a little girl. Sam took a very dim view of people who threatened little children. He withdrew the holotape from his Pip-Boy and put it in his bag, along with the case files. Sam stared blankly at the space behind Nick Valentine for a few minutes. Then they headed off together towards perdition.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Post-chapter notes: S: We actually had a bit of an editing war over the +++ around Hex’s statements. Those are mostly in earlier Hex appearances rather than later ones, but they look cool, so eventually I relented and they stayed. 
> 
> A: When I did my re-read of the Discworld series, I noted that, as the series progresses, Pratchett barely mentions any of the student wizards, and very few of them get names. Also, some of the wizards who had been student wizards, such as Adrian Turnipseed, grow up and get jobs elsewhere. So if one wants to write about end-series student wizards, one has to make up OCs. These ones are vaguely based off people I knew in graduate school. Very vaguely.


	6. Unfitting * One Shot * Something Scrambled * Above the Law * Thanks, Io

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter songs: [Prowler](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECyfX1OR_nk&list=PLLEELrwJ-FyotucudE52BnFg6vVn1AGne&index=10&t=0s) by Bohren & der Club of Gore and [Furious Angels](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icRbCHDPbXM&list=PLLEELrwJ-FyotucudE52BnFg6vVn1AGne&index=11&t=1s) by Rob Dougan.

_Unfitting * One Shot * Something Scrambled * Above the Law * Thanks, Io_

They didn’t find all the holo-tapes in any specific order, because Sam found himself called all over the place by the needs of other people, but the more tapes that he found, the angrier he became, and Sam was angry at baseline. Eddie Winter was a man who deserved a date with Mr. Trooper.

They passed by a Brotherhood of Steel encampment that was under siege by ghouls, and Sam said cheerily, “Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch,” but then he recognized the building as the Cambridge Police Station where Nick himself had been chased away by ghouls in retrieving a holo-tape alone, which led Sam to sneak Nick back into the building just to see if he’d missed anything. It was odd, how the Brotherhood of Steel would make snide comments about Nick and then just let him walk right by. They were specieist, certainly, but they didn’t seem to put much effort into it. Inside the building, Sam and Nick found a terminal entry from Captain Widmark welcoming the detective Nick Valentine to Operation Winter’s end.

Not long after, their search took them near Diamond City, so Nick stopped in to update Ellie on the fate of his old partner, whose body they’d found. “Can't believe Marty made it all the way to the Grasshopper,” Ellie mused thoughtfully. It was clear she hadn’t really liked Marty, but it seemed she found something impressive in his death. “Seems I never gave him enough credit.”

While Nick was talking to Ellie, Sam went through Nick’s personal items. It didn’t seem like the golem actually objected, and Sam was a nosy bugger. On the floor next to Nick’s bed was a set of case notes that caught Sam’s attention. Nick’s handwriting continued to be inhumanly legible, although Sam was pretty sure that rumour was spelled ‘rumour’ and not ‘rumor’, as Nick had spelled it. 

> CASE: The Mysterious Stranger
> 
> Sightings of a man dubbed "The Mysterious Stranger" have been popping up sporadically across the old U.S. for years now.
> 
> Best case, the man's an amoral lunatic.
> 
> Worst case, a prolific serial killer.
> 
> All anyone knows is his MO: appearing suddenly, killing without remorse, disappearing without a word. "The Stranger" has no known accomplices, no clear method for selecting his targets, no calling cards left behind.
> 
> Sightings range from the NCR all the way to the East Coast, stretching back decades. Now he's come to the Commonwealth.
> 
> Last thing this place needs is another psychopath running amok. Time to start putting together the pieces to put this one away.
> 
> DESCRIPTION
> 
> Human male. Outfits vary, but most recent sightings describe a large overcoat and fedora (guy has taste, I'll give him that much).
> 
> One man? Multiple men? A Ghoul with minimal scarring? Might explain the long passages of time between sightings.
> 
> Appears and disappears suddenly, suggesting preternatural infiltration abilities/access to advanced cloaking tech.
> 
> All but the earliest descriptions suggest "The Stranger" uses only conventional arms, making infiltration training more likely.
> 
> (Perps like this make me wish the Institute had sprung for thermal detection before giving me the boot.)
> 
> SIGHTING LOCATIONS
> 
> \- The Commonwealth (confirmed)
> 
> \- Capital Wasteland (confirmed)
> 
> \- NCR (old rumors)
> 
> \- Shady Sands (really old rumors) 

Sam speculated to himself what manner of supernatural being might be able to appear and disappear to kill unerringly. _I could let you do that, if you'd let me,_ said the Summoning Dark.

He told the Dark firmly, _No._

Sam took Nick's notes on the Stranger, because if they ran into the bastard again, Sam wanted to be able to append the notes. Besides, it wasn’t like Nick objected. Sam also looked again at the ancient newspaper on Nick’s desk, the one he’d previously dismissed. Because now they really were trying to close a two century old case, the front page article stood out to him.

> **Case Closed on Crime Boss Eddie Winter**
> 
> By Mags Veccio
> 
> Boston Bugle Staff Writer
> 
> In a move that has shocked and angered the people of Massachusetts, the Boston Police Department announced last night that they have ceased all investigations into the actions of reputed organized crime boss Edward "Eddie" Winter.
> 
> Speaking on behalf of the special task force that had been assembled specifically to build a case against Winter, Captain Jonathan Widmark of the BPD said, "After reviewing the evidence with our colleagues at the Bureau of Alcohol, Drugs, Tobacco, Firearms and Lasers, it became clear that we were, in fact, wrong. Eddie Winter has indeed had a colorful history. But it is not a criminal history. By pursuing our case against Mister Winter, we would simply continue to waste taxpayer dollars and, even worse, condemn an innocent man."
> 
> It was an unexpected turn of events, to be sure. According to the Boston Bugle's confidential sources within the Boston Police Department, the "innocent man" was anything but. As uncovered by Captain Widmark's official investigation, codenamed "Operation Winter's End," Eddie Winter was involved in every crime imaginable, from petty larceny to first-degree murder. And although nothing was proved, everyone on Widmark's task force suspected Winter in the August homicide death of their lead detective's fiancé, a miss Jennifer Lands.
> 
> Whatever the truth, it would appear the city of Boston has nothing more to fear from Eddie Winter. When approached for comment, the alleged crime boss could not be reached. In fact, his South Boston sub shop has been shuttered, and his harborside residence completely cleaned out. Eddie Winter, it would seem, has disappeared. 

Nick Valentine kept that article on his desk. It seemed he looked at it every day.

* * *

Next, they finally made their way towards Lexington, where they met with Deacon. He led them up to an overpass while he provided more details on the job and explained the railsigns they passed. As they approached their ‘tourist’, the informant who had been watching the area for them, Deacon whispered the countersign to use: "Mine is in the shop." 

Ricky Dalton, the tourist in question, asked the question Sam had been told to expect, a desperate edge to his voice, "Do you have a geiger counter? Do you have a god-damned geiger counter?" 

Sam rolled his eyes and gave the countersign he’d just been given. Ricky explained that the Slocum's Joe was crawling with Gen-1 synths and that the entire area was mined, although he cast a suspicious look in Deacon and Nick’s direction and complained that he had been told to only expect one person. Deacon explained that he was there to receive training from Sam, and that Ricky needn’t worry. Vimes remained stone-faced as Deacon lied so as to avoid panicking Ricky further.

When Sam and Deacon discussed what they had heard, Sam asked him why he’d lied. Deacon shrugged. “My job in the Railroad is intel. That job's easier if no one knows who I am. So I lied. I do that.” 

Sam grunted, but conceded, mostly because there were more important things to worry about, such as how to get into the Slocum’s Joe. Deacon explained that there had been an escape tunnel, and that was the route they chose. 

Sam, Deacon, and Nick snuck in via a tunnel draped in moss. Deacon did most of the hacking of terminals as they slunk through what turned out to be a secret pre-war government facility that had been beneath the donut shop called the Switchboard. The trio snuck up on groups of old Institute synths and swiftly took them out. Deacon warned the other two that if they ran into something called a Courser that they ought to just run, but the warning proved unnecessary: the only trouble they ran into were those poor, dumb Gen 1 and 2 sods that the Institute threw at their problems in mass quantities.

Eventually, they found the corpse of Agent Tommy Whispers, and after investigating the body and concluding that Whispers had died protecting Carrington’s prototype, Deacon forced Whispers’s silenced handgun, the Deliverer, on Sam over Sam’s own protests. Then they recovered Carrington’s mysterious prototype and found their way out of the Switchboard and up through the donut shop. Sam and Nick parted ways with the Railroad Agent and headed off to Sanctuary to verify whether Codsworth was coping well with the burdens of leadership. There they found multiple humans demanding that Codsworth provide more beds. Sam mused, “I suppose beds wouldn’t be particularly high on Codsworth’s list of priorities.”

* * *

While in Sanctuary, Nick and Sam ran across Preston. Nick looked unexpectedly delighted to see the Minuteman. Preston again tried to convince Sam to help more with the Minutemen, entreating, “We need someone who can bring the whole Commonwealth together in a common cause. And I think you've got it in you to be that leader.”

Nick lit up and enthused, “With you at the helm, the Minutemen could be a big damn deal.”

Sam Vimes felt entrapped, and he glared at Nick. “Like I don’t have enough things to deal with on my own?” Yet, he found himself not wanting to disappoint Nick, and he granted, “I can help a bit. If I’m in the area. I mean, look, I’m heading for the Glowing Sea as soon as I have the supplies...”

Nick said happily, “Finally! Something going the Commonwealth's way.” 

Preston brightened and said “Good. Good! Welcome aboard. I feel like this is a whole new start for the Minutemen, and the Commonwealth, too. Don't worry, I'll be right beside you all the way... General.”

Sam Vimes rubbed his eyes and said flatly, “What.”

Preston said defiantly, “You're going to have to get used to it. The leader of the Minutemen has always held the rank of General. Our last leader was General Becker. After he died back in '82, nobody could agree on who should take his place. The one good thing about being the last Minuteman is there's no one to argue with me when I say you're the new General. Now it's your job to make it more than an empty title. By the way, you should have one of these flare guns. You can use it to signal for help from any nearby Minutemen.”

Why did people keep handing him guns? Sam deadpanned, “So you mean… just you?”

Sam Vimes was tired. As it turned out, Codsworth really hadn’t stocked Sanctuary with enough beds, although Sam was eventually able to find one to crash on for a couple of hours. 

After a dreamless sleep, Sam and Nick set back out again, found a few more of Winter’s holo-tapes, and eventually made it back to the Railroad headquarters, where Deacon was rather implausibly talking up Sam Vimes to Desdemona and also completely ignoring the fact that Nick Valentine had been there the entire time. Sam tried to set the record straight, but Desdemona was still impressed and offered to make Sam a full Railroad heavy.

Sam Vimes certainly did hate slavery. He accepted. Desdemona wanted him to pick a code name, and he thought about the dead man’s weapon that Deacon had imposed upon him. The Institute thought they’d killed Whispers, did they? The Institute was going to find that Whispers was going to be haunting them for a long time to come.

While working on the remaining tapes, answering various Minutemen calls, and scavenging for fusion cores, RadX, RadAway and Power Armour parts, Sam Vimes decided that he wanted to go have a look-see at the Brotherhood of Steel’s horrific mechanical dragon-battleship, the Prydwen, that was moored at the Boston “Airport”.The general concept of an airport boggled Sam’s mind. Ankh-Morpork was a port city and a very successful one at that, but he tried to imagine an Ankh-Morpork Airport, where people might land their brooms, flying carpets, and Wyrmbergian dragons, and that just seemed like eight shades of terrible.

The Brotherhood of Steel, he decided, did not have very effective security officers, because he was able to just wander in the backside of their encampment through some unlocked doors. Some Brotherhood of Steel soldiers did find him and told him that he was not allowed to be in there, while making disparaging remarks about Nick Valentine, but then they turned their backs on him, allowing Sam to continue wandering around their camp. He ran into a second group of soldiers, who also told him to leave and also said some rather unfair things about Nick Valentine, but again, it wasn’t as if they actually tried to physically escort him away. Eventually, Sam decided that he had a good enough idea of the layout of the Brotherhood of Steel encampment around the Prydwen, so he left.

* * *

“How we doing on the hunt for Eddie's tapes?” Nick said again, as they wandered through the ruined basement of a ruined building, filled only with ruined people who were now feral ghouls who wanted to eat them both, despite Nick having no meat on him.

Sam just gave the other detective a look, because he couldn’t seem to say what he actually wanted to say, which he was sure would have been sarcastic and witty if only he could have managed it. As it was, he felt like was on a long carriage ride with young Sam - “Are we there yet?” - because Nick kept saying the same thing, well, same three or four things, over and over again, even right after Sam had just found another of the tapes. How were they doing on the hunt? Sam wanted to point at the tape that Nick had just watched him pick up!

It was at tape eight, the number of magic, that Nick said it again and then paused. Sam finally managed to say, “How are we doing? Oh, I don’t know, Nick. Like I literally just picked up this tape?” He waved it at him, annoyed.

Nick stared blankly for a moment and then rubbed his temples, which was, come to think of it, not a gesture Sam’d seen before from the strange golem man. He muttered to himself, puzzled, “Why I do I keep saying that, anyway?” He crossed his arms and looked away. “Guess I must just be anxious.”

Sam grunted noncommittally. Nick was talking about doing what was, no matter how he sliced it, cold-blooded murder. The golem had better be anxious about it! If Nick wasn’t anxious, Sam told himself that he would have left. He didn’t want to be a party to murder, no matter what it was that Eddie Winter punk had done. Sam kept telling himself that he would just help the other detective gather the tapes, because innocents really had been hurt; the evidence was plain to see and hear. Then, in the end, he’d let Nick deal with Winter. A metal hand was easy to wash clean, but skin stained.

* * *

Ponder, who was not yet truly worried about Commander Vimes being somehow stuck inside Hex’s game world, had nonetheless been working tirelessly to get him out, because a number of exceptionally powerful people were rather vexed by the Commander’s unscheduled absence. A number of different powerful people, however, were delighted by that absence, and they were making the first group even more anxious. Ponder passed out around 3 AM. Coffee could only take a wizard so far, and he’d been up for three days straight.

Regular checks for the signature of Vimes’s mind inside Hex’s game world told him that the Commander’s morphic field was still holding and hadn’t fragmented past retrievability, but now it was 3 AM, which was neither the witching nor the wizarding hour, and Ponder was asleep, face down on a table. He didn’t see Hex’s printout that indicated not one but two mental signatures present.

* * *

There were a lot of things about the Sole Survivor that didn’t add up, and Nick wasn’t sure what disturbed him more: that, or the fact that he’d only recently started noticing those things.

Make no mistake: Sam Vimes was still the best damned thing to happen to the Commonwealth in a long time. Even buried in his own problems, he did what he could to help anyone they encountered that needed help. At the moment they were stalled on his own quest, lacking either the fusion cores they needed to power the ancient Power Armor he had found in Concord or the sheer volume of Rad-X and Radaway they’d need to make it through the glowing sea without the armor, so while Sam looked for those things, Sam helped others. He protected settlements, he helped the Railroad; he helped Nick track down Eddie Winter’s old tapes. Sam clearly had reservations about that last one, though fewer now than when the hunt had started. Sam Vimes raged at every injustice revealed in those tapes as though they were personal insults to him, and not the ruining of a long dead copper whose memories now belonged to the synth.

But Sam was also… well, frankly, he seemed a little insane. A few of the machines they’d encountered together seemed to recognize Sam as some sort of former military man, but Sam himself flatly denied it. Instead, he seemed to think remarkably like, well, like an old copper. What was that he had snapped to Nick on their little tour of the areas between Vault 114 back to Diamond City? “Skip the policing 101 lecture, Nick, and just get to the location specifics.” The synth had done so and not thought anything about it, and… why hadn’t he noticed just how _odd_ that comment had been in the circumstances? Why was he only picking up on it now?

The Sole Survivor was also clueless about the Commonwealth. Fair enough, he came from a Vault where he had been frozen in time. But he seemed to completely lack any kind of pre-War memories at all, the memories he should have if he was indeed the pre-War soldier that some of the machines seemed to think he was. Could he be a Gen 3? Missing and incomplete memories were one of the signs, but… the memories that Sam seemed to have sure as hell weren’t the sort of things the Institute would implant. For example, there was the way Sam referred to robots (and to Nick himself) as ‘golems’. He occasionally referred to his Pip-Boy as a ‘dis-organizer’ or an ‘imp’. He seemed thrown off any time they encountered a globe in a ruined school or burned-out office building. He once asked why the weeks seemed to be missing the day between Saturday and Sunday. 

Finally, there was his accent. If Sam had been a pre-War American soldier, why the hell did he sound like some sort of working-class Londoner? If he was a Gen 3 synth, why would they equip him with an accent that would stand out like that one did? But then, _no one else seemed to notice his accent,_ and that made no damn sense, either.

None of it seemed to fit together, and Nick knew he should have been picking up on things _that_ far off earlier than he did. 

The two were roughly on the way to find the last two tapes, but they on a slight detour to help a settlement besieged by mutants that Preston had told them about. After that, it wouldn’t be too far out of their way to head back to Sanctuary and give Preston an update, and, well, Sanctuary happened to be conveniently close to the place most likely to have answers to the question, “Who is Sam Vimes?” 

Nick pondered how to ask about going there. Finally he went with, “Hey, Sam? I was thinking. Maybe while we’re in Sanctuary we can swing by Vault 111.” Sam gave Nick a puzzled look, but before the Sole Survivor could voice the question, the synth explained, “I was just thinking it might hold a few clues to your situation that you missed, is all. No offense, Sam, but you’re not exactly a genius with the terminals.” It was reasonable, it was broadly true; it just wasn’t a complete explanation.

Sam snorted in agreement, then scowled. “Oh great. ‘Clues’. But you’re right, gods know, there could easily be something in there I missed.”

“Gods know.” Not “God knows,” but “gods know”. And he always seemed to be swearing by multiple gods. Another piece to the puzzle, and it fit no better than the rest. “Thanks, Sam. Once we get there, I’ll let you know if I can dig up anything.”

* * *

On their way to Sanctuary, they made a stop at the Red Rocket truck stop where Sam had first met Dogmeat. Sam had been making use of the place as a rough base of sorts, a place to stash gear that might be useful but was too heavy to carry around all the time, and for making sure his armor and weapon were in top condition. It was also the place where Sam would rather enthusiastically scrap as many guns as he'd been able to carry with himself.

Nick looked over the contents of Sam’s pack, which were currently spread out in... rather a larger area of the garage floor than made sense, really. Nick put that thought away and picked up an unopened bottle of bourbon that Sam had found somewhere . "So why are you even carrying this around?" he asked. "It's not like you need it. You don't drink."

Sam destroyed another pipe revolver on the workbench as he considered his answer. Finally he said, "That's not quite true. I do need a drink. Desperately, at this point. That's why I don't drink."

Nick opened his mouth to ask for clarification, but then his optics brightened. "Oh. _Oh!_ "

Sam glanced at the synth and nodded. "The problem is, with me, one drink always shows up in a dozen glasses. I can't say 'no' to a second one or a third one, so I've got to know I can always say 'no' to the first one." He approached the stuff spread out on the floor and selected a sniper rifle. Nick almost winced at that one. That gun had been a pretty lucky find, but since Nick didn't have a use for it, Sam had no interest in keeping it around. As Sam grabbed the weapon, he explained, "I can't just... never go near alcohol. Those unopened bottles are everywhere, it seems like, and a lot of what we do involves bars. Besides, there've been people who've tried to use my... weakness as a weapon against me in the past. So instead I practice not having a first drink even when it's right there, and I practice that constantly."

Sam returned to the work bench and went about disassembling the rifle while Nick picked up and examined a weapon that had been given to them by Deacon. Sam had, more than once, complained about the tendency of people around here to reward him by forcing guns on him, and Deacon had, to Sam's mind, been particularly egregious about that, shoving what was supposedly a valuable prototype into the Sole Survivor's hands even after he had protested. As with all the guns Sam had been so unwillingly gifted with, he had offered this one to Nick, but unlike any of the others Nick had turned down, Sam hadn't destroyed this one, instead keeping it tucked in his pack.

"You don't care much for guns, do you?" Nick observed.

"No," Sam answered firmly. "If I could, I'd wipe them all from this place, but I'll have to settle for these." He made a noise of disgust. "These people give guns to children. Hell, even the animals have guns!"

"I think it's more accurate to say the animals _eat_ people who have guns," Nick responded with a tone of wry amusement.

Sam finished destroying the rifle and threw his arms in the air. "But they're all still working condition!" he exclaimed, exasperated.

Nick frowned as he considered that. "Yeah, that... is a bit odd." Sam returned to pile and picked through it, selecting a laser pistol, the last of the guns besides the gift from Deacon. "But you seem okay with me using one."

The human shrugged. "I'm not sure if 'okay' is the right word. But whether I like it or not, they're everywhere here, and... I trust you with them a damned sight more than I trust most people in the Commonwealth." It was a hell of an admission. He paused, as though working up the strength to admit something even more difficult. "You're a good man, Valentine, this... Winter business aside. I think I can trust you to put it down when the time comes." Vimes had made his discomfort with the 'Winter business' clear from the start, though it was starting to seem like each subsequent tape left Sam in a darker and darker rage. Sometimes it seemed as though the Sole Survivor was developing as great a hatred for Eddie Winter as the synth himself possessed. As much as Nick appreciated Sam's help in the matter, he was starting to question his choice to involve the other man: it seemed to be stirring something deep and dangerous and raging within Vimes. By this point, though, they were so close... just two more tapes, and they could both put the business behind them, certain that the old criminal would never add to the Commonwealth's already numerous problems.

Besides, Sam was just helping Nick to get to the guy. Nick wouldn't think of asking Sam to help him do the deed.

The synth turned the weapon from Deacon over in his hands. "You keep this one with you, but I haven't seen you use it," he observed.

Sam glanced over at what Nick was holding, then went back to disassembling the laser. "At first I thought maybe I could keep a small one on me for special situations. Like turrets that were out of reach." The cases where Sam flat couldn't reach something were rare enough, anyway. Granted, sometimes he had to charge up scaffolding or across an open area to reach it, but he usually found a way. Exceptions still happened, though. Sam smirked and looked over his shoulder. "Now I've got you to deal with those for me." 

Nick gave the other man a crooked grin. "Happy to be of service." Then he put the gun down and his tone became more sober. "You know, the way you talk, it almost sounds like you trust me with a gun more than you trust yourself."

Sam worked silently for a few moments before he said, "That's exactly it, Valentine. I don't trust myself with a gun. You seem to have a handle on it."

"But you keep the gun with you."

Sam finished with the laser and went back to the pile and crouched next to it. "It's like the whisky," he said, gesturing towards the bottle. For whatever reason, he never called bourbon 'bourbon'. "I know I won't be able to turn down a second shot, or a third, so I don't take the first shot. But I have to know that I can always, always not take the first shot, especially since I know these damn things are everywhere." He starts to pack things back into his bag. "One shot comes in a dozen glasses, or one shot becomes enough to fill a magazine. I suppose I'm just not a one-shot sort of man, but I have to know I can be a no-shots sort, no matter what."

* * *

They helped another settlement that was dealing with raiders, recruited said settlement to the Minuteman cause, stopped at Sanctuary, and checked in with Preston. When they finally did stop at Vault 111, Nick found himself distracted at a terminal, as he often was, while Sam checked on the cryopod where Sybil’s body was entombed. Nick had only been on the terminal for a few moments, when Sam, who was both grieving and offended, came back and tapped Nick on the shoulder and hissed, “You wanted to look for Clues,” as if that was a dirty word.

“I’ve already found some…” Nick started to say absently. For one thing, the terminal told him that there’d been a remote override on the life support.

Then Nick saw that Sam had Sybil’s pod open, and he saw the murdered woman. His face went somber, and he murmured, “Now that's not... oh. Oh, I'm so sorry.”

Neither Nick nor the original Nick had ever been much for murders. The original Nick had been with the Bureau of Alcohol, Drugs, Tobacco, Firearms, and Lasers, and his last case there was why the synth Nick was dragging poor Sam Vimes around the Commonwealth in search of tapes. Nevertheless, he investigated the corpse, commenting coolly, “.44 Magnum round, but then, we already knew Kellogg did it, and that was his ammo of choice. Old burn scars on her head...”

He turned a questioning look to Sam. Sam was a good man. Nick didn’t think for a moment that Sam had done anything untoward to his wife. He just had to ask.

“Sybil had some… dangerous pets,” Sam said, and his tone and posture were of a man who was telling the truth, but not the whole truth.

“And what, the dog knocked a curling iron over on her head?” Nick said, lips curled.

“I don’t suppose you’d believe me if I told you that she kept swamp dragons?” asked Sam.

Sam didn’t seem to be lying, and yet, Nick Valentine did not believe him. Sam was a good man, but his brain had to be scrambled in some fashion. 

“So, you said you’d started to find something?” said Sam.

“Yeah,” said Nick, with a curt nod, as he went back to the terminal. “There was a remote override on the life support, causing premature termination, which was why Mr. DiPietro, the Whitfields, the Cofrans, the Callahans, the Ables, and Mr. Russell had died of asphyxiation.”

Nick watched Sam carefully. There was no real sign of recognition in his eyes at the names of his supposed neighbours. 

Nick continued, “And your pod door was also manually overridden. Someone wanted everyone else dead, and someone wanted you out and alive. Might not be the same people. Most interestingly, I can’t find time stamps on any of it.”

Sam thought that over and said, “I can’t make any sense of that.”

In addition, the Vault 111 files on Sam Vimes said that he was a former soldier who served in the 2nd Battalion, 108th Infantry Regiment of the U.S. Army during the Sino-American War and a decorated war hero, the sort that folks would ask to give speeches at town halls. Psych profile suggested some PTSD, but Nick Valentine had already spotted that from a mile away; it was the kind of thing that he would know. At some point, Sam married Sybil, and they had a son, Sam, in 2070. Sybil earned a law degree at Suffolk County School of Law and got a job with her degree following young Sam's birth. On the morning of October 23, 2077, a Vault-Tec representative visited the family to inform them that they had pre-approved admittance into Vault 111.

Nick said casually, “So your wife was a lawyer, huh?”

Sam stared at Nick blankly and asked, “That’s what that terminal says?” His mouth twitched. He looked offended.

“Hm,” said Nick. Yes, there was certainly something scrambled about Sam Vimes. Vault 111 had been a sick sort of experiment, with its frozen banana people, but Nick dug through all of the terminals, and he found himself unable to find any evidence that Sam Vimes’s mind, in specific, had been tampered with. The missing time stamps bothered Nick, though, and why had someone wanted Sam Vimes out and alive and everyone else dead?

* * *

Eventually, they made it to the BADTFL regional office in search of the final missing tape. There, Nick found something more than he’d been prepared for. It was a terminal entry, and Sam checked on Nick, who was just staring at the screen, shaking slightly. Sam read over Nick’s shoulder.

> CASE LOG 155-H-109 - BADTFL INFORMANT SUMMARY Picking up a lot of chatter recently from Eddie Winter's boys asking after a Jennifer Lands of South Boston. Ran background on the name and turns out she's engaged to Nick Valentine, one of the Detectives running Operation Winter's End.
> 
> Request made to supervisors to fast-track the two of them for witness protection (or at least inform them of danger) but request was denied. Higher-ups don't want to compromise ongoing BADTFL investigation. 

Nick’s metal hand clenched on the desk and left dents into the surface. Eventually, he said quietly, “I didn’t know the BADTFL knew that Jenny was in danger and left her in danger because they didn’t want to… didn’t want to compromise their God-damned _fake_ investigation… Dammit! Sam, look, let me show you something else, I think it’s still here if these old flashes of memory ain’t failing me now…”

Sam already knew the end that Jennifer Winter had come to, and this terminal entry suggested that it could have been avoided, that the higher-ups had known it could have been avoided, and they had chosen not to avoid it, considering the ongoing investigation to be worth more than her life. He grimaced with distaste.

Nick tore through the rest of the decrepit office, turning things over until he found a holo-tape labelled ‘We are done’, from Captain Johnathan Widmark, directed at the original Nick Valentine. He slotted it into Sam’s Pip-Boy.

> Detective Valentine. Nick. Listen... I'm sorry. You've got every right to be upset, but you need to believe me when I tell you I had no idea. Operation Winter's End was my baby. I believed in it. I still believe in it. They kept us all in the dark, me included. I got briefed this afternoon, and they laid it all out. The whole thing. Winter's deal with the DA. His agreement to bring down the other families. His idea to record the holotapes and incriminate all known associates. And them needing a legitimate op, and a real task force, to make it all look like Winter was the focus. It was the plan all along, Nick. There's nothing we can do. Winter was a stoolie for the feds. He reported directly to the BADTFL. All on the books. For his cooperation, Winter will be granted total immunity. It's over. Effective immediately, Operation Winter's End is to cease all investigations and operations. The task force is hereby disbanded. We played our part, pal. Not the part we thought, but hey. It happens. Now we're just another box in the file room. Nick, listen to me. Everything that's happened. With Winter. With... Jenny. It's more than any one man should have to handle. You need help. Boston PD has been working with the eggheads at C.I.T. Some new program they have to deal with trauma. Scanning brainwaves or some such. I'll get you the info. You're going. That's an order. 

Sam’s mouth opened to say something and then closed. He puzzled through it all, pulling it apart like a terrier with a cheap dog toy. Something stuck out to him: Eddie Winter had killed Jennifer Lands just because he could and he knew that he’d get away with it. He had no need to scare Detective Nick Valentine off the case. Winter was in on the case from the start; he wanted to see the case to its end, where he walked away a free man after implicating all his former associates and letting the government remove his competition for him. What a sick bastard! Chrysoprase could have taken notes and learned a thing or two, if he wasn’t ‘reformed’.

Sam Vimes continued to think carefully, examined the situation from a few angles, and concluded that it couldn’t have happened in his Watch. Sometimes criminals turned King’s Evidence, it was true, but anyone who had done what Eddie Winter had would have been seeing Mr. Trooper. Besides, he knew that his Watch had put people into protective custody for less danger than Jennifer Lands had been in. So there would have been no fake investigation, Eddie Winter would have been dancing the hemp fandango, and if Jennifer Lands had been in danger, they would have done their best to get her out of it.

‘It wouldn’t have happened in my Watch,’ wasn’t going to comfort Nick Valentine, who was the ghost of a copper done wrong, done so dirty by his own government. 

Sam Vimes exhaled slowly. He was furious, but he suspected, not as furious as Nick Valentine was. For once, Valentine’s anger outdid Vimes’s own. Eventually, Sam said, “There aren’t words for it, are there? But… Gods, Nick, I’m sorry. So. What do you need from me to finish this?”

* * *

Once there was a King. He was called “Kind”, but only because his people were too afraid to call him something more appropriate, not even in their heads. His actions were so unspeakable that people genuinely did not speak of them; nor did they say anything when friends or neighbors disappeared into the night; nor even when their children returned from an invitation to play at the palace, and would flinch away from people where they hadn’t before, and would start crying at unexpected times, and no longer laughed like they did before they went, and were much quieter than before.

Once there was a Watchman. The King was above the Watchman. The King was above the Law. The Watchman saw that there was no one else who dared raise their hand against the King, no courts that would judge him, and the Watchman decided he must live up to his name. He could no longer suffer this injustice. And so the Watchman did what no Watchman should have to do in any sane society, and he became not just Watchman but judge, not just judge but jury, and not just jury but executioner. If no one man should have the power of a King, certainly no one man should have the power of police, judge, jury, _and_ executioner, but the Watchman did it anyway, because it was the job before him and there was no one else who would share the burden with him.

Sam Vimes had never wanted to be Old Stoneface, though he’d always taken some pride in being descended from him. Suffer-Not-Injustice had done something that desperately needed to be done, but to do it, he had needed to step far beyond the role of just the Watchman. Sam Vimes had never wanted to be in that position.

But now he could see the parallels clearly in what was happening before him. Before the war, there had been a King of Crime who had found a way to put himself above the Law. He could not be brought before a judge, there would be no jury, no execution. As a ghoul, the Crime King might well live forever. But there was a Copper determined to see to it that this King did not stay above the Law, that this injustice would not stand, even if it meant taking on the roles of judge, jury, and executioner himself. 

Sam had told himself that he would help Nick gather the tapes, but once Nick had them, Sam would let Nick deal with the matter on his own. He had told himself that perhaps a metal hand could be washed clean more easily than a flesh one. But now, as the time came, Sam wavered. Once Sam entered the code to unlock the door, Nick Valentine would walk through it to take on roles beyond what any one copper should, but he would do so, anyway, because it was the job before him.

But that didn’t mean there was no one else to share the burden.

* * *

“You better start explaining what the hell you're doing in my bunker,” snarled the ghoul that Eddie Winter had become. It wasn’t a good look on him. There was only one look that Nick Valentine wanted on Edward Winter: dead.

Winter continued, “Just how the fuck did you... No. No way. Not after all this time. Don't tell me you actually cracked my code? In the holotapes?”

“It wasn’t hard,” said Valentine flattly. Getting the code out of the tapes was something a child could have done. The hard part was fighting past raiders, Gunners, military robots, Deathclaws… but Sam Vimes had seen him through that.

“Ha ha ha ha ha! Well hey, it's only been... what? Two-hundred years? Ha ha ha ha ha. Well look... I'm not sure what you thought you'd find - gold, jewels, the secrets of the universe. But you get me. One guy. A ‘ghoul’, I guess you'd call me. Just living. Surviving. And what I got, you can't have. That code... it was a joke. I just wanted to prove how dumb those Feds were. Turns out, pretty dumb. So take your asses someplace else,” snarled Winter.

A joke on the Feds. Those same Feds who had decided that Winter was worth enough to them as a stoolie to justify the cost of Jenny’s life. Priceless, precious Jenny. She had been worth anything to Nick Valentine. He would have died for her. Now, he would kill for her. Valentine continued, implacable, “I'm not going anywhere until I get what I came for.”

Winter look puzzled and demanded, “Yeah? And what's that? And who are you, huh? You look kinda familiar. But... what are you, some kind of robot? Is that what it's like out there now? A world of robot overlords? I knew it.”

Looked kinda familiar? He supposed he’d take that. “The name's Valentine. Nick Valentine. Remember me?”

“Valentine? The cop? Is that who you're supposed to be? Sorry pal, but you ain't Nick Valentine. You're just some kind of... machine,” scoffed Winter.

Valentine wavered for a moment, but people had called him worse. It didn’t matter what he was or who he was. There was a job to be done here, and Winter had to be told why he was going to die. “You killed my fiance. Jennifer Lands. There are some crimes even you can't get away with, Winter.”

“Your fiance? You mean Valentine's fiance? Pretty girl. A shame what happened to her.” Winter smirked. “But hey you... or, you know... the real Valentine. He shoulda backed off when he had the chance.”

“No. You killed her because you could. You knew you had immunity coming,” snapped Sam, the Shem Drowne sword in his hand. It didn’t have to be, Valentine well knew. Once that door opened, Sam could have stayed out of this entirely. God knew, the man had helped Valentine more than enough.

God wouldn’t approve of what Valentine was going to do.

“But what gives, robot man? Why do you even care? Some girl gets whacked 200 years ago, and you come into my home, acting the hard guy? Christ, look at you. You're not even alive,” Winter said, dripping disdain.

“Then I guess I'm in good company,” said Valentine, and he was done with words. Two shots, and then the pistol butt coming down on Winter’s head - Winter might have gotten a shot into Valentine, but Sam darted in with the sword and parried Winter’s snub-nosed pistol away as Valentine’s pistol butt came crashing down on Winter’s head.

The ghoul slumped down on the floor, bleeding from the two shots that Valentine had pumped into him. Winter sputtered, “Not... yet...”

But it was yet. Valentine stood over the man he’d murdered. He’d planned it. He’d broken into the man’s home. He had no blood, only coolant, and he was all the more cold-blooded for it. If he wasn’t just a machine, if he had a soul, it was forfeit. Valentine looked to Sam, who was wiping the blood from his sword before he sheathed it. He nodded slightly, gratefully acknowledging that parry of Sam’s, the one that had kept Winter’s pistol from Valentine’s gut - if he had guts, of course.

Valentine said, “We're done here. But there's one more thing I've got to do. I... I wouldn't mind the company, if you wanted to tag along.”

There was an easier exit out the back, up a set of stairs, and Valentine took it, now that he knew it was there. Not far from the damned sub shop, underneath which Winter had lived for over two centuries, there was a spot with two bullet marks on the pavement. Valentine found the spot and knelt down and touched the two bullet marks, still here, after all this time.

He looked to Sam, who had followed him, and Valentine explained, “This is it. In this spot, two hundred years ago, one of Eddie's boys gunned down Jenny Lands, my fiance…” he caught himself; he was only a copy, “Nick's fiance. Now Eddie's as dead as Jenny and Nick. And I... I'm at a loss.”

Sam knelt and examined the two bullet marks himself, and Valentine could see Sam Vimes imagining the scene, thinking through where the triggerman must have been standing. He said, “Bullet marks don’t wash away quickly in the rain, huh?”

Valentine felt like he was meant to say, ‘All I know is that, without you, Eddie'd still be at large,’ but there Sam Vimes was, being distracted by evidence for the two century old case that they’d just closed. “I suppose not.”

Sam speculated, “If you’d dragged him back to Diamond City alive, Security would have just killed him, yeah?”

Valentine snorted. He was never going to take Winter alive. “For being a ghoul, yeah. Not for anything he did.” He paused. Valentine knew that all of this business had been distasteful to Sam, and Sam, who was almost always angry, had become angrier with each tape they’d found, as he’d seen the shape of the man Valentine was hunting. His anger could be a dark thing, Valentine was finding, and he regretted giving the man such cause to be angry. Still. “Thank you. I know this was hard on you. You didn’t have to -”

“I know I didn’t have to. I wanted to. And that’s the problem, I suppose? If I ever want to again, hold me back, Valentine,” said Sam Vimes.

Nick Valentine blinked. There were words rattling about in his head, about whether this would have fixed things, about who and what he was, with the last of the original Nick Valentine’s demons exorcised, and justice. He let the words rattle and die, and he nodded to Sam Vimes. “I… all right.” It was a simple request. It was the least he could do. “I’ll hold you.”

* * *

The radioactive rain fell heavy from the slightly greenish storm-colored sky. It was going to be a bad one, but they were too far from cover to properly hunker down for the storm. Instead, Sam and Nick crouched behind a barricade of a building too wrecked to offer protection. From there, they could hear a sickenly familiar beeping coming from further down the street. "Damn it! Suicider!" Sam hissed.

The synth took aim while Sam waited for it to get close enough for him to run in and dispatch it as quickly as possible with the ancient sword he and Nick had dug up. Sam resisted using guns as much as humanly possible, but his refusal to use one now caused problems when dealing with things like mutant Suiciders. That refusal was also a bit of a contrast to his otherwise pragmatic, exploitive, dirty-fighting approach to combat. He had eventually adopted the strategy of darting in as fast as he could and taking the mutants down before they could trigger their devices. The strategy largely worked, although at least once he had been entirely too close to the blast of one of those ‘mini-nukes’. Shockingly, he had managed to survive, but barely, and had found himself sickened by a large dose of ‘rads’.

This time, before Nick could even get his first shot at the suicider, and far before Sam even had a remote chance to dash in, a bolt of lightning fell from the sky and struck the mutant, triggering its device while it was still a safe distance from Sam and Nick, but while it was still close enough to the other mutants to take them out with it. The fight was over before it had begun, called on account of lightning.

Both Sam and Nick stared down the street now empty of anything but wreckage and tiny bits of super mutant, then they looked at each other. "Well, that... that sure did happen," observed Nick, unusually at a loss for words.

"Yes," agreed Sam. "I guess... thanks, Io?"

"...Who?"

Sam cautiously stepped away from the barricade, scanning the streets. "You know. Blind Io. Thunder god."

Nick began to follow the human, arguing, "Do you mean, I don't know, Thor, or Zeus, something like that?"

"Never heard of them. I mean Io."

"Sam, that’s not a thing," Nick grunted as he prodded at a super mutant's detached arm, verifying that there was nothing useful underneath it.

"It was a thing where I come from," Sam argued.

"According to Vault One-Eleven's records, you came from Boston."

Sam stopped, blinked, and turned back towards Nick. "Wait. Isn't _this_ Boston?"

Nick shrugged. "Well, more or less."

"I'm not from around here, Nick," Sam stated flatly.

Nick snorted. " _Clearly_ ," he agreed dryly. There was really no way that the man in front of him could be the man described in his vault file. The detective would have assumed that the records had been somehow switched, but they had the right name, and the physical description had him dead to rights, but nothing about the background on file matched what Nick Valentine had observed. Maybe there was some aspect to the Vault's experiment that Nick had failed to find in the records? Something that had left Sam thinking he was from a world with imps and golems and an eight day week and gods that Nick had never heard of? Why, though? But at this point, that was the only explanation Nick could come up with.

Sam was continuing down the street, searching into the shadows as he moved, and added, "Besides, I wasn't serious. That was probably just a million-to-one, not the gods. I wouldn't expect any of those shifty bastards to lift a finger, or lightning bolt, to help a couple of old coppers out, anyway."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> S: While Nick was starting to go off script before, he is now fully a real boy. This would make it a bit less awkward when Sam subconsciously flirts with him, except that the moment you have “Sam Vimes” and “flirts” in the same sentence, you’ve already got awkward. 
> 
> S: Also, the business with the super mutant suicider did more or less happen in my game. Since there are no crossbows in the Commonwealth, my Sam was a melee build. Consequently, super mutant suiciders are a real bitch to deal with. At one point Nick and I were crouching down the street, I was mentally trying to prepare myself for my semi-suicidal dash-against-the-suicider, and suddenly… it exploded, taking the rest of the super mutants with it. Neither me nor A saw what triggered it, but it _was_ in the middle of a rad storm, so A announced, “Thanks, Io!” we decided it had been lightning, and that became the scene. 
> 
> A: Why are there no bows and crossbows in the Commonwealth? One would think people would build them after the apocalypse.
> 
> S: At the very least, the ammo would be a lot cheaper and more easily available.
> 
>  **We love comments of all lengths, and understand the need for low-energy commenting like kudos. If you ever find yourself wanting to give us additional kudos, feel free to leave a comment of an icon or emoji of a heart!** <3


	7. After Dark * All the Parts * Who Wrote This?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter songs: [Midnight](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQeMxWjpr-Y&list=PLLEELrwJ-FyotucudE52BnFg6vVn1AGne&index=12&t=0s) by Coldplay and [My Body Is A Cage](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jdve08cG3pE&list=PLLEELrwJ-FyotucudE52BnFg6vVn1AGne&index=13&t=0s) by Arcade Fire
> 
> **We’ve created a Discord server for chatting about Discworld, Fallout, or this fic! It’s still in its infancy, but if anyone’s interested, it can be found at<https://discord.gg/6QM4Egy>**

_After Dark * All the Parts * Who Wrote This?_

“One of our field agents, Old Man Stockton, needs help with a runaway synth, H2-22,” Dr. Carrington explained. He sounded exasperated as he continued, “So headquarters, as always, puts out the fires that others can't be bothered to put out themselves. The paranoid old bat won't even tell us the problem, he insists that we get our intel from a dead drop.” 

Of course Nick and Sam were willing to help. Sam was still scavenging for more supplies for his trip to the Glowing Sea, and Nick was always up for helping his fellow synth. It was a little odd that the Railroad didn’t comment more on Nick, he thought, but maybe they were trying to be polite? Granted, Nick also refused to believe that Carrington was capable of being polite. It was a puzzle.

The dead drop was in an area surrounded by mines, which Sam methodically disarmed and then stashed away in his backpack. Sam was very good at disarming traps, Nick noted, whistling lowly. Sam played the holo-tape that they found and complained, “So… it’s a dead drop saying to go talk to him, anyway?”

They went to Bunker Hill and found Old Man Stockton, who was a paranoid old man in a decent suit and hat who worked as a caravan boss. As they approached, Stockton asked, “Welcome, my friend. Might I ask, do you have a geiger counter?”

Sam rolled his eyes and said, “Mine is in the shop.”

“You? I was expecting someone of the... feminine persuasion,” said Stockton circumspectfully, “You're with our mutual friends, yes?”

“Sure. I’m very friendly,” said Sam, who wasn’t.

“Of course,” said Stockton, nodding appreciatively, “You've just joined, haven't you? All you need to know is this is the first stop for all our new... packages. So maintaining proper security here and preventing any unnecessary delays is crucial.”

“Right. I hate delays, too,” said Sam, who was tapping his foot.

“Why do all your packages start here?” asked Nick, thinking. The Institute had a teleporter. Surely, escaping synths could go anywhere within the teleporter’s range?

Stockton hesitated and froze up a little. Then he stuttered, “When a package leaves the manufacturer, they go to a specific location. The location changes, but for now it's here. So if I'm compromised, the whole supply chain dries up.”

It seemed rather dicey to Nick, the escaped synths all going to this one spot. Surely, the Institute was going to get wise. Perhaps, when Sam got into the Institute to get his son, something a bit more permanent could be done to improve the situation of the synths in the Institute.

“My current package has been in my possession far too long. I'm supposed to deliver the package to someplace nearby. But raiders have complicated matters. So if you could...?” said Stockton, and the words that he left dangling from the end of a noose, unsaid, were, ‘kill them?’

Sam sighed and looked wearily to Nick, grumbling, “Goon squad?”

“It’s for a good cause,” said Nick, though he understood Sam’s reticence, or at least, he thought he did.

“Other problems I can solve myself. But sometimes you need a hammer,” said Stockton, cheerily calling Sam a tool, “It's scheduled to be a nighttime delivery. So if you can clear out the undesirables before dawn, we can do this tonight. See you soon.”

As they headed towards the Cambridge church, out of earshot of Stockton, Sam ranted, “‘Undesirables’! Gods, what a despicable word. You can call anyone that, and suddenly, you’ve got an excuse to kill them.”

Part of a highway was collapsed over the church, and yet, the church was still standing. The raiders did attack first, and Sam and Nick ‘cleared them out’, a sanitary turn of phrase for the dirtiest of works. It wasn’t just raiders, though, there were also super-mutants, even a suicider. Nick had to admit that Sam was god-damned nuts when he’d go charge a suicider with a sword, but it seemed to work out okay for Sam. Once they had secured the location, they waited. In the dark of the night, Stockton brought around someone whom Nick assumed was the synth, and he lit a lantern to give the all clear sign.

The signs on the church were long gone, and inside it, there was no crucifix or cross, which would have been a dead giveaway as to whether it was Catholic or Protestant. All of the ornamentation was gone, likely stolen. Protestant and Catholic Churches often looked much the same in the United States. This one was very near the BADTFL regional office, and Nick tried to remember if there was anything in the original Nick Valentine’s memories about a church, but all he had were flashes here and there, and he didn’t think the original Nick Valentine had been particularly religious. He wasn’t a lapsed Catholic, no, but he’d had other concerns on his mind. So many concerns on his mind, in fact, that C.I.T. had copied them down and the Institute had put them into a synth.

So here Nick Valentine was. Sam went over to the synth and talked to him, and Nick wanted to talk to him, as well, but something was pressing on his mind. The European-Middle Eastern War had ended in 2060, and the Vatican was gone before the end of it. The Catholic Church had gone on in exile, but in 2077, the bombs and missiles flew. These days, there were no Catholic priests in the Commonwealth, although maybe there were some somewhere.

As Sam talked to the synth - Nick caught the name H2-22 - Nick Valentine settled himself down in what even odds would say was the wrong sort of church, with no priest, and he thought about how he might not have a soul and had never been Confirmed because there was no one left to Confirm him, even if he was Confirmable. The man who had been Confirmed as Catholic, the original Nick Valentine, was well and truly dead.

None of this was right, but if he did have a soul, perhaps God would understand that Nick Valentine was doing the best that he could, here. He started hesitantly, “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been…” Two hundred years? Eternity? His last confession was in the memories of a dead man. He let his optics shutter for a moment. He wasn’t that original Nick Valentine. “This is my first confession, overdue.” Why had he never done this before, he wondered? It wasn’t just the lack of the church, the lack of the priest, the lack of Confirmation, and the lack of his soul. Why had it never come to mind? “These are my sins.”

The list was long and, he suspected, incomplete. Nick Valentine’s memory was not quite what it could have been. He’d taken a lot of knocks to the head in his years. Still, the list was as complete as he could make it. He even included the murder of Edward Winter.

Then there should have been penance, should have been acts of contrition, but there was no priest to assign them. A few dozen Hail Mary’s weren’t going to cut it, he was sure.

Nick Valentine stood and walked over to Sam and H2-22. H2-22 nearly jumped and looked Nick over with wary disbelief. Nick gave H2-22 a friendly smile and explained, “I’m an old prototype Generation 2 synth, but I’m running an independent mind, just the same as you are.”

The sobering thought occurred to Nick, as it had before, that if it wasn’t for the prototype that was him, the Institute would have never been able to play people-snatcher. In specific, Nick knew that he demonstrated that a synth could run the memories of a human with such a degree of fidelity that Nick would slip up and call Jenny his fiance. If not for him, synths like H2-22 would never have been made. Perhaps helping Sam Vimes find his missing son, stolen by the Institute, was more than a little absolution for Nick Valentine for the sin of his creation. 

Sam nodded at Nick’s explanation and said, “I was just asking H2-22 if he remembers anything about how he escaped from the Institute, but it seems the Institute wipes are quite thorough. Institute life for synths is… sad. H2-22, you were saying about what life was like?” Sam himself didn’t look sad. He looked furious and barely contained. Something about slavery seemed to really set him off.

H2-22 seemed to nervously accept Nick’s explanation about being an older model, and at Sam’s prompting, he explained, though he seemed afraid to even recount it, “You await instructions. You execute instructions. You perform basic self-maintenance. Anything else is considered defective. And then the SRB comes. They're the ones that watch us. To make sure we're not defective. To make sure we don't run. Synths that get noticed just disappear. I don't know where they go.”

“Shit. Maybe I was lucky to end up on a trash heap,” said Nick, lighting a cigarette. That account would have given him chills, if chills were a thing that could happen to him.

H2-22 apologized to Sam, as if afraid of disappointing him, “I'm sorry, I don't know much about the Institute. I worked the maintenance tunnels. Every day for as long as I can remember. The only time I spoke to anyone was to acknowledge scientists' orders and very rarely to other synths. I've talked more in the past few days than I have my entire life.” He seemed so fragile, so overwhelmed.

If more raiders or anyone else caused any trouble getting poor H2-22 to safety, Nick Valentine knew he wouldn’t have any qualms about putting some caps in some heads. So much for contrition.

Sam prompted, “Scientists?” Sam had this weird habit of referring to scientists as witches, wizards, artificers, and alchemists. Nick wasn’t sure what was up with that.

“Yes. At least that's what we called them.” H2-22 wracked his brain, looking for the words to describe concepts with which he was only distantly familiar. “My only interaction with them was to receive orders on what to clean. I would acknowledge my task and occasionally ask for necessary clarification. But that's really it. I heard there was a Concourse above the tunnels. It's huge, big, and green. With many synths. But they're watched more carefully by the scientists. Mr. Stockton said very few synths from that section ever escape.”

“We’ll get you to safety,” said Nick firmly.

“Just need to wait for High Rise now,” said Sam, who was tapping his foot with irritation.

H2-22 almost seemed choked up with gratitude. “Thank you. You have no idea how nice it is to talk to someone.”

Eventually High Rise, a dark skinned man, arrived, and he greeted Sam with, “Don't shoot. Whispers, right?”

“Something like that,” said Sam.

“I heard about you. Walked the Freedom Trail, cleared out Switchboard. Glad you joined the team,” said High Rise, who seemed to be genuinely friendly.

Sam asked, "’Do you have a geiger counter?’" 

High Rise turned professional and replied, “Right, you are. ‘Mine is in the shop.’ All good?” Then he looked distracted. “Now, let's take a look at our friend.” He walked over to H2-22. “Hey you. You OK?”

“A little rattled. But I've never been better. The other man... He said I shouldn't talk too much,” said H2-22. Sam had gotten him talking, though, observed Nick. Nick could see Sam being very good at getting people talking, when he wanted to.

High Rise reassured delicately, “He told you right, H2. You'll need a real name, and a new face, but we'll get to that. There's more of them raiders behind me. Afraid we need a little more help.” He looked over to Sam.

“What do you mean a new face?” asked Nick, thinking about Crocker, who’d murdered a man with a botched plastic surgery and then comitted suicide. He also thought about Deacon, who changed his face several times a year. He also mused to himself about what a ‘real’ name even meant.

High Rise explained, “We got to file off the serial numbers on new arrivals. Make it hard for the Institute to find them. Most synths go in for a brand new set of memories, as well. For that extra protection and all. But first we got to get him to safety. We need to get to Ticonderoga Safehouse. My home.”

Ah, yes, the Railroad did mind wipe synths, as it was rumoured, but only if they asked for it. He didn’t know how to feel about that. Nick Valentine hadn’t gone to the Railroad for it, but at one point, he’d tried to separate himself from the original Nick Valentine, and well, he’d gone to Doc Amari in the Memory Den. He’d lost a month of his life, and the memories remained. Nick wasn’t going to try that again.

“Then let’s go,” said Sam simply.

“I’ll lead the way,” said High Rise, nodding decisively.

St. Thomas Aquinas made a reasonable case that appropriate violence in self-defense or in the defense of those who could not defend themselves was acceptable. The fact was, the raiders used so much violence themselves that almost any amount of retaliatory violence could have been considered cheerily justified by a theologian with minimal effort. Battered, coolant circulating furiously, Nick still felt a little sick when he stepped into the old skyscraper, and he thought that Sam did, too.

Sam asked tiredly, “So, is this a normal operation?”

High Rise admitted, “More than I'd like. Sometimes I can sneak our friends through all by my lonesome. But other times it's like the damned raiders are holding a convention. Working with you made it a whole lot easier. If you ever need grub, bullets, or just a power-nap take the elevator up to Ticon. My house is yours.”

Nick considered the weariness in Sam’s voice, and he decided for Sam, “Yeah, you’re taking that power-nap, if not more.”

* * *

“Mind if I join you?” asked Nick as Sam angrily flopped down on the tattered old mattress on the floor of the Ticonderoga Safehouse as if it had personally wronged him.

Sam gave Nick a blank, puzzled look. 

“I, ah… thought you might be interested in my company,” said Nick, holding up his hands. “I’d been flirting with you for a while now, and you didn’t seem to mind. Now if my gaydar’s7 on the fritz…”

Sam blinked. “Er, flirting? That’s what that was?”

Nick blinked and ran through some of the lines he’d tried on Sam, “‘There any machines you can't charm?’ ‘Got a thing for antiques, huh?’ ‘Traveling alone just doesn't hold the same allure it used to.’ ‘Well, aren't you something?’ ‘Ah, my knight-in-shining-armor.’” He did tend to flirt somewhat indiscriminately, even flirting with Sam from the first moment he’d met him, but he’d been more and more serious about his passes as he’d gotten to know Sam better. However, Nick had noticed that ‘You sure you're not part synth?’ did not go over so well. After Sam had helped him finish off Winter, and they’d both had time to process through their feelings on the matter, Nick had thought that Sam might reciprocate some of his feelings, admittedly muddled as they were.

“Oh. Flirting. Yes. That’s what that was,” Sam said, as realization dawned upon him.

“I, ah, I’ll just go work on this tear in my trenchcoat,” said Nick, pointing out a rip in his sleeve and looking back out to the door of the little alcove.

Sam, however, grabbed Nick’s wrist and pulled him down to sit on the bed, still looking puzzled. “But how would it work?”

“Oh, uh, I have all the parts, minus a few red blood cells,” Nick said, hoping against hope. There were some folks who thought that humans and synths ought not entangle, but if Sam was just confused on the logistics, that was something Nick could clarify for him.

“No, I mean, you’re, er…” said Sam, who was, Nick noticed, blushing.

“...a man?” prompted Nick, tilting his head to the side.

“Yes. That,” said Sam. “I know it can work, of course, and I've even… thought about it, but I've never… tried…” Sam Vimes was often running, and sometimes he was running into areas of buildings where people did not expect a Sam Vimes to be. He had seen things. He had thought about things. He had not done certain things, however, because they were a particularly good way to become acquainted with a lead pipe to the head. 

“Oh, I could show you how that works, if you’re game,” said Nick, grinning cheekily. He reached out to run a finger along the side of Sam’s face.

Sam caught his wrist and held it, not moving Nick’s hand off his face but not letting him move, either. His expression was very, very wary, like he was concerned that Nick was setting him up as the butt of a joke. Nick thought about the Mr. Gutsy that had ranted about ‘pansy ass pinkos’, and he supposed appearing like one was always a concern, but even just recently, Nick had watched Sam rip through all of the raiders who had dared to threaten H2-22. Anyone calling Sam a pansy needed some recalibration. Nick tried to reassure, “I’m serious. No jokes, here. But I understand if you’re not interested.”

Nick was just a busted up old synth, anyway. One’s man’s trash didn’t have to be another man’s treasure. Sometimes, trash was trash, garbage in, garbage out.

Sam leaned in and kissed Nick, questioningly, no, _interrogatively_ , as if he were conducting a crime scene investigation. Then he broke away and seemed to be thinking. Nick hoped that whatever evidence Sam had been looking for with that kiss, he’d found. Sam said haltingly, “I’m not… uninterested. Just… give me a bit?”

“I can do that,” said Nick, smiling. He could take that.

“But uhm, you can do that ‘diagnostic’ thing here that you do, if you’d like,” said Sam.

Nick did, and Sam spent the rest of the night largely unsuccessfully trying to use Nick as a pillow. Nick also discovered that Sam tended to sprawl, as if he was trying to use up the entire bed all at once. He snored. His sleep was longer than even the longest of Nick’s diagnostic routines, but Nick didn’t want to wake him. Sam needed the sleep, Nick well knew, better than Sam seemed to know himself. So he listened to the beat of Sam’s pulse and the sound of his breathing and took some joy in the fact that Sam, wary and skittish, had allowed him to get that close.

7 Nick Valentine was not of a world that had ever developed bi-fi, but even if he had been, Sam Vimes wouldn’t have understood that, either.

* * *

Zinon had scripted out a lovely little modification that clipped together a romance script for Nick Valentine out of his existing lines, and Sam Vimes’s Sole Survivor had blundered his way through it obliviously, seemingly not even noticing that he had the option to romance Nick Valentine. No, he simply seemed to want to drag Nick Valentine all across the Commonwealth, enforcing rough frontier justice until Judgement Day. Xian was never going to know if the Lover’s Embrace perk worked as it was designed.

Then Zinon was looking over one of Hex’s update printouts and puzzled over it. “Xian, oi! Your Lover’s Embrace perk is up and working. Seems like it’s modifying the Hexperience Point tally correctly.”

Xian looked up from his Subjunctive Scaling homework, fairly leapt over over of the laboratory tables, and shoved Zinon to the side to snatch the paper from him. “Who with!? I thought he still hadn’t had a new Companion with him aside from Nick Valentine, and the Sole Survivor blew that…” He stared at the paper, and then he turned to Zinon accusingly, brandishing the piece of paper like a battle-fan, “Did you script this? ‘I, ah… thought you might be interested in my company. I’d been flirting with you for a while now, and you didn’t seem to mind. Now if my gaydar’s on the fritz…’”

Zinon sniffed and said, “Patina’s penguin, no. My writing’s much better than that.”

Xian turned back to the rest of the laboratory and demanded, “Who wrote this whittle?”

Chatur said, “Not it,” which left Alf, who also denied, “No point to it.”

Xian leaned over the keyboard and demanded of Hex, “Did _you_ write it?”

+++ NO +++

“Hex, who wrote this?” Xian snarled.

It was at that point that Ponder Stibbons returned, and despite themselves, the four graduate student wizards tried to look like they were accomplishing something more useful than arguing about a romance subplot. Alf took up Xian’s discarded Subjunctive Scaling homework and pretended that it was his own. Chatur scurried over to the hot plate and started another pot of coffee. Xian and Zinon were left standing in front of Hex, caught out. Xian guiltily shoved the paper printout into Zinon’s hands, and in the great tradition of students everywhere when confronted with an authority figure, said nobly, “He did it.”

Ponder pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed, “Zinon did what, Xian?”

“Broke the script,” said Xian.

“I did not!” Zinon snapped back.

Ponder looked weary and said, “The script’s not really our biggest concern at the moment. More concerning is the integrity of the Commander’s morphic field.” He appeared to be troubled. “So if I could just see _those_ readings…” He held out his hand, and Zinon guiltily surrendered the printout. Ponder scrutinized it, and then he looked at Zinon and Xian in turn. He said flatly, “You were arguing about the script.”

Wizards argued. It was their nature.

“It wasn’t so much an argument. It was just Zinon being wrong,” said Xian, matter of fact. He was going to go far as a wizard some day, putting aside the fact that his stated plan was to return to Bes Pelargic.

“Xian is grossly misunderstanding the entire situation!” Zinon protested.

Ponder carefully set down the printout and studied both Xian and Zinon and then said gently, “You are arguing about the script, and you missed that there is a new morphic field in the game. You are _both_ grossly misunderstanding the situation.”

Hex supplied helpfully:

+++ 00002f25 is thinking for himself. 00002f25 is writing his own lines. +++

Xian blinked. “So… Nick Valentine decided to romance the Sole Survivor, not the other way around?”

Alf, who could not make heads nor tails of Xian’s Subjunctive Scaling homework, possibly because it was not, in fact, a real subject, mumbled, “I suppose the Commander is just role-playing the Sole Survivor, it’s not like it’s actually him. 

Ponder covered half his face with his hand and ever so slightly raised his voice, “ _That game just made a new person._ ”

* * *

Sam woke up on top of Nick, his face down against the other man’s chest. He scrambled up with alarm and looked around nervously. Had anyone seen them? There was another mattress right there on the floor that other Railroad members often used, and there wasn’t even a door. Anyone could have wandered in and seen them. Then he reminded himself that he’d seen two very much male Railroad members together on the mattress in the large common room of the Headquarters, which was as in public as one could be without being out on one of the war-torn streets. He’d seen men walking together in Diamond City as clearly more than friends. Even if Sam didn’t think much of his skills of deduction, it was easy to see that no one here begrudged an invert. Perhaps they had more pressing problems, like the essential nature of their hell-hole world. People would come for his money and his life, and they would force him to take that last thing away from them in the process, but they weren’t going to come at him if he wanted to cuddle up a bit with a man, he told himself.

Nick’s amber optics were already lit when Sam awoke, and he seemed amused as he greeted, “Good morning, doll. You elbowed me in the face five times during that nap, not that I’m counting.”

“Hmph. My aim must be off. Should have been eight,” said Sam, and he busied himself latching his armour back on. He preferred to sleep naked, but he wasn’t going to do that when just anyone from the Railroad could have walked in on him. Nick seemed to run his diagnostics fully clothed, and Sam found himself wondering what ‘all the parts’ looked like on Nick.

What did Nick see in Sam, anyway? On a good day, he was 5’5” of scars and anger and frustration that no one would just let him arrest them. Sam knew that couldn’t be a good look. To listen to Nick, though, Sam was the best thing to ever happen to Commonwealth, and Sam thought the only way that could possibly be true was because nothing good ever happened in the Commonwealth, ever, which set a low bar for ‘best’.

He got his armour on and started to head out when one of the Railroad agents seemed to feel the need to comment, mildly, “I guess he wasn't kidding about being a real synth lover.”

To which Sam’s reply, to his horror, just sort of spilled out as, “And I guess you’re just upset you can’t find one who likes you that much!”

Nick gently but firmly placed a hand at the small of Sam’s back and walked him the rest of the way out of the Ticonderoga safehouse. Above ground, Nick sighed and lit a cigarette as they headed back towards Headquarters. “He didn't mean anything by that, you know? Probably just thought it was funny. But I'm sorry, and I should have warned you about this, because some cats will mean something by it, and I can understand if that's something you don't want to deal with?”

“I don't want to deal with?” Sam said incredulously. “Nick, I don't want _you_ to have to deal with it! You shouldn't have to. Look, I know that, despite your otherwise good judgment, you think I'm a good person, but I'm really not,” and he continued darkly, “and I used to be worse. Used to hate nonhumans and excused it to myself that I hated humans, too. You deserve better.”

Nick arched an eyebrow. “The fact that you had a problem and you fixed it makes you pretty great, in my book. Just… folks might say some pretty inflammatory stuff, and I don't want you punching someone out on my account.”

“If they aren't going to be civil…” Sam started, and he sighed. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

They ran across raiders on a bridge, a different group than the one that had previously tried to sell them drugs. This time, the only thing they were selling was violence, and there was no talking them down. What a waste. There were ghouls. There were always ghouls. Eventually they made it back to Railroad headquarters and they picked up their next mission: the Augusta safehouse, which had recently gone dark. Due to the short length of his nap at Ticonderoga and the troubles they’d encountered on the way back, Sam decided to get in a proper rest before going out again. He did his cooking and checked his gear. Nick watched him. He seemed to like to watch. 

Sam stripped off his armour, although he left his dark grey canvas pants, tattered green shirt, and fingerless hand wraps on, in case he needed to move quickly upon awakening. Nick hesitantly sat at the edge of the mattress. Sam grabbed him by his coat lapels and dragged him down for a kiss. Nick tasted of ash and his last drink, some moonshine. The moonshine was a temptation, but it was one Sam Vimes was practiced at resisting. He curled up against Nick and didn't do anything more, still debating with himself if Nick was a temptation that needed to be resisted. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter has sexually explicit content. Feel free to skip it and rejoin us next week with chapter 9.
> 
> Also, as a heads up, the next few chapters will be shorter than usual. Sam and Nick are at an early point of their relationship where things are new, so there’s a higher-than-typical density of explicit sections, meaning shorter in-between sections. Average chapter length will more or less return to normal around chapter 15, or in about 4 weeks.
> 
> A: It was important for me that Nick Valentine be a real person and that he initiate any romantic relationship on his own, not as a result of any scripted tampering. The term ‘bisexual’ was in use in the 1950s in a mostly modern sense, so it’s valid for Nick to call himself bisexual, insofar as Fallout has a very 1950s aesthetic. Given all of Nick’s flirty lines, such as, “Got a thing for antiques, huh?” and the fact that Nick will refer to a male character as his knight in shining armour, he fits well as bisexual with a slight preference for women.
> 
> On Sam’s side, there’s decent canon evidence that he’s bisexual. Most of the canon evidence that Sam Vimes is bisexual is in Snuff.
>
>>   
> And then there were the frescoes, such that if you were a man easily persuaded then it was a good job there was a cold tap, because not to put too fine a point on it, as it were, there were a large number of fine points all over them, yes indeed, and the ladies were only the start of the problem. There were marble gentlemen, as well, definitely gentlemen, even the ones with goats’ feet. It was surprising that the water in the bath didn’t boil of its own accord. He had asked Sybil about it, and she said that it was an important feature of the Hall, and gentlemen collectors of antiquities would often visit in order to inspect it. Vimes had said that he expected that they did, oh yes indeed. Sybil had said that there was no need for that tone of voice, because she had occasionally taken a bath there from the time she had been twelve and had seen no harm in it. It had, she said, stopped her from being surprised later on. [Snuff]
> 
> ‘the ladies were only the start of the problem’. Vimes isn’t only turned on by the women. He’s turned on by the men, and some of those men are nonhuman - specifically, they are satyrs. (All of those times when he asked Carrot or Angua about how their relationship was working can be looked upon as an eggmode xenophile in denial trying to work through his own thoughts.)
>
>>   
> There was another pause, and in the red light Vimes could see the shine on the old man’s face. ‘What is going to happen to her, commander? At the moment, two polite young ladies in Ankh-Morpork City Watch uniform are standing guard over her in our house. I don’t know if this helps very much, but the first thing she did when the arresting officers arrived was make them tea. There is such a thing as good manners, you see. Is she going to prison?’
>> 
>> Vimes felt the urge to say, ‘Would you like her to?’ but he choked it back, because of the tears. ‘It’s Charles, isn’t it?’
>> 
>> The colonel looked surprised. ‘As a matter of fact, commander, it’s Chas to my friends.’
>> 
>> ‘Am I one of them?’ _[cut for length]_
>> 
>> ‘I do love her, you know,’ said the colonel. ‘We’ve been married for fifty-five years. I’m very sorry you’ve been troubled and, as I’ve said, I envy you your job.’
>> 
>> ‘I think, perhaps, I should envy her her husband,’ said Vimes. [Snuff]
> 
> Vimes asks if he can call Colonel Makepeace ‘Charles’ and if he’s a friend, and then, after a long monologue, says, ‘I think, perhaps, I should envy her her husband’. He wants a husband like Colonel Makepeace!
> 
> None of the other books are as blatant, but there’s nothing in them that contradicts a bisexual reading of Vimes.
> 
> See: [my informal essay on the subject](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23740486) for more information, if desired. 
> 
> Both: **We love comments of all lengths, and understand the need for low-energy commenting like kudos. If you ever find yourself wanting to give us additional kudos, feel free to leave a comment of an icon or emoji of a heart!** <3


	8. Horror Movie Monster (Explicit)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains **sexually explicit content**. If that’s not for you, feel free to skip and rejoin us next week with chapter 9.
> 
> **We’ve created a Discord server for chatting about Discworld, Fallout, or this fic! It’s still in its infancy, but if anyone’s interested, it can be found at<https://discord.gg/6QM4Egy>**

_Horror Movie Monster (Explicit)_

In the fallen Augusta safehouse, Sam ducked and darted across walkways and through ruined hallways, taking down raiders in ones and twos and then disappearing once more into the maze of passages. In the end, he dropped down onto a deathclaw as if _he_ were the horror movie monster, finishing it with a well-aimed stab of an irradiated blade. Afterwards, he and Nick soberly listened to the Augusta station’s last update. 

_We are under attack. Repeat. We are under- My God. Listen, Augusta's not going to make it. They're going to be here any second. They knew exactly where we were. Tell-_

“There's a mole,” Sam concluded, wiping the blood from his sword with disgust. 

“Probably,” Nick agreed. With Institute synths about, it could be anyone. 

When they holed up for Sam to rest again, Nick kissed him, and Sam kissed back, and Nick toyed with the line of Sam’s jaw with his synth flesh hand. He’d enjoyed the cuddling over the last few days. If cuddling was all there ever was, Nick would count himself a lucky guy, but he’d always been one to push his luck, and Sam himself had said he wasn't uninterested, that he'd just wanted to wait a bit. 

But there might not be a tomorrow, so Nick broke away from kissing Sam and asked, “You mind if I get into those pants of yours?”

The wariness returned. “Depends what you're thinking.”

“Oh, just a blowjob.” Nick wanted, rather badly, to go down on Sam, and besides, Sam already knew what Nick's face looked like, and he seemed to be willing to put up with that ugly mug, only God knew why. 

Sam looked puzzled and asked, “I don't, er, know what that is.”

Nick stared. Sam didn't know what a blowjob was? He’d been married! He had a child! Granted, blowjobs were one way of avoiding having children, but still. He couldn't help saying, “You don't know what… How did you manage to have a child?”

“Well, not with a man,” Sam said archly. 

“Look, I just want to suck your cock, okay?” Nick explained, giving up. He threw his hands in the air. 

“Oh, you want to bagpipe me,” Sam concluded. 

Nick narrowed his optics as Sam mentioned the musical equivalent of a cold shower. “I love you, Sam, but if you ever call it ‘bagpiping’ again, I'm not doing this.”

“But… that's what it is,” Sam started to argue, and then it seemed to dawn upon him that, yes, he did want a blowjob, now that he knew what it was, so he quieted himself. “Uhm. Yes please?”

Nick undid Sam’s belt and unbuttoned and unzipped his pants, pulling them down. He’d seen Sam in his underwear. Sam had, in fact, fought Kellogg in his underwear because he hadn't been able to find clothes that fit under the best armour he'd had available. Didn't that chafe, Nick had wondered. He pulled down Sam’s underwear, and Sam was indeed excited to see him, not that Sam would ever have a gun in his pocket. Nick was flattered that Sam was still able to get it up for him, what with how much of his blood was currently devoted to the blush on his face.

Sam was uncut, Nick noted, but he had that working-class London accent, so Nick wasn't surprised. Besides, Sam seemed to be some weird sort of pagan. Nick pulled back Sam’s foreskin with his synth flesh hand and gave his head an experimental lick. Sam made a soft, pleased noise, and Nick went on, licking along the shaft and stroking. The louder he made Sam, the bolder that Nick grew, taking the head into his mouth, to lick and suck and swirl. Oh, but it did his old circuits good to hear Sam simply enjoying himself. The man deserved it. 

Nick was about to take Sam deeper when he remembered something, and he paused, taking his mouth off Sam’s cock long enough to warn, “You’re going to want to pull out before you finish, or you’re going to spend half an hour cleaning out my neck.”

Nick could handle ethanol okay and most clear liquids, but cum would gum up his works, and with the holes in his face and neck, it would splurt everywhere. Sam just said weakly, “Uh huh.”

Nick went back to licking and sucking and then took Sam all in, which made him moan most gratifyingly, music to his audios. He took his time, letting the suction build and releasing, exploring Sam’s every gasp and whimper. Sam grabbed at his head, knocked his fedora off and to the side, and then grasped him by the ears after carefully feeling out how well-attached Nick’s ears were, which Nick appreciated. Finding Nick’s ears to be sturdy enough to safely use as handles, Sam held him down on a particularly deep gulp and then let him go. Nick came almost all the way off and then flicked along the underside with his tongue before taking him again, searching out what really would make Sam go wild.

He eventually found it, as Sam cried out, “Oh, gods!” and also found that Sam hadn’t really been listening when Nick had warned him. Sam panted for a while, eyes slightly glazed. Then he took in the mess he’d made of Nick and looked rather sheepish. “Er… I think I’ve got a bandana, just let me help you with that.”

Sam spent several frustrated minutes cursing as he tried to wipe out all of Nick’s nooks and crannies as Nick just lay back, rather smugly not helping at all. Nick put his hands behind his head and waited as Sam worked. At a particularly small crevice, Sam grumbled, “Can’t get the bandana in, too tight.” He looked away, and an idea seemed to occur to Sam that made him blush, again, a secondary blush superimposed on the blush he already had. It was a blush that was rapidly approaching a full bottle of rosé. Then Sam leaned in and licked into the crevice.

Nick sharply inhaled air for auxiliary coolant, and his fans whined. He grabbed at Sam’s head, moaning, “Oh, God!” he squirmed up against Sam as Sam licked his own cum out of Nick’s neck until he was clean.

Sam’s groin ground up against Nick’s, and apparently noticing Nick’s arousal, Sam asked, “Do you, er, want a blowjob?”

“Thought you’d never ask, doll,” said Nick. He sat up on the edge of the mattress, unbuckling his belt and unbuttoning his pants. Sam sat up in a kneel and watched. Nick got his pants and briefs down. His cock and right ball were still in decent shape, he thought, although the synth flesh on his left ball had been torn pretty badly, exposing the metal sphere underneath. The old injury didn’t hurt anymore, but it still looked nasty.

Sam arched an eyebrow and asked, “What happened to your twiddle-diddle?”

Nick mouthed ‘twiddle-diddle’ incredulously, grabbed Sam’s wrist, and snapped, “You gonna tell me about this tattoo, doll?” He’d asked Sam about it before, and Sam had shut down and refused to speak of it. It was just a little red tattoo like an eye in a circle with a devil’s tail. Sometimes, Nick swore the tattoo glowed.

Sam looked away.

“Yeah, thought so,” said Nick.

Sam looked back at Nick and frowned. Then he looked down, remembered what it was that he wanted to do, and stretched out on the mattress, approaching Nick’s cock cautiously, as if it were a snake he was worried was going to bite him. He touched it with one hand, pulled away as if burned, and then touched it again nervously before giving it a stroke. Nick covered his eyes and tried hard not to sigh. At this rate, it’d take all night. He offered gently, “You don’t have to, y’know. I can handle myself.”

“No! I mean, uhm, I’d like to,” said Sam hotly, and he tried to put all of Nick’s cock in his mouth all at once, and Sam quickly learned that humans have what is called a ‘gag reflex’. There was a “Mph!” and Sam backed away for a moment, catching his breath. “...this seems trickier than larking a man trap.”

Nick gave up on Sam and his weird words for sex and just suggested wearily, “Try kissing along the shaft and just giving the tip a suck. Don’t try to fit it all in at once.”

Sam listened, and he was enthusiastic and sincere and so very sweet. He only needed a few more course corrections to stay on the right track. Nick’s fans begged for mercy, whirring loudly as Vertibirds. When he finally came, he came dry, as he always did; the Institute had, for some reason, given him a cock functional enough to orgasm with, although he didn’t have any ejaculate.

“God,” he said, looking fondly at Sam, who looked a little puzzled at the lack of mess in his mouth. Nick hauled him up for another kiss and then explained, “I always come dry.”

“Hygienic?” Sam hazarded. “Was that, er, all right?”

“Very all right,” said Nick, nuzzling down again Sam’s neck. “You did perfect, doll.”

Sam sounded relieved, “Oh good, because I’d like to try that again sometime.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> S: This chapter has one of my favorite pictures I’ve done for the fic so far, and I’ve gone and buried it in an explicit chapter. **shrug** We considered moving this first part to the previous chapter, but given that the Summoning Dark symbol gets explicitly mentioned a little later on, I thought it best to keep it here.
> 
> A: Whether or not Nick has a penis is a point of some fandom debate. Some will point out that G2s synths very clearly don’t have penises, but Nick is not a standard G2 synth model; his face, notably, is quite different. He might be different elsewhere as well. Some will point out that Nick’s character model doesn’t have a penis, if one uses mods/console commands to undress him, but that matter, the character model for a ‘male’ Sole Survivor doesn’t have a modeled penis, either. Some will point to his, “I have all the parts, minus a few red blood cells,” line. There’s the fact that it took Nick, who has an Intelligence of 16 out of 10, higher than the smartest baseline human can manage, weeks to sort out what he was. “I remember waking up one day in a garbage heap, a body in tatters and a head full of memories belonging to a man who'd been dead for 200 years. Suffice to say it was a confusing couple of weeks.”
> 
> These points and counterpoints are relevant to fanfics that assume that the Fallout universe is ‘real’. For this fanfic, however, it’s all irrelevant, because Hex, in the name of ~~laziness~~ efficiency, didn’t bother rendering Nick’s unclothed crotch region until Nick actually took off his pants. Up until that point, Nicky’s dicky was Schrödinger’s ding-a-ling. But when Nick took off his pants, he was assuming he had a cock – all the parts, ahem – and a cock was what Hex rendered for him.
> 
> No one gets to ‘see’ this, though, aside from Sam, because Hex does have a sense of privacy. Ethical computing is very important in fictional environments. ( **note from S:** God knows, it’s not important enough in real environments.)
> 
> I did consider writing an alternate version where Nick doesn’t have a dick. I still might as an AU one-off if there’s interest.
> 
> S: Personally, I felt justifying the Nick Dick in fic was overkill, and figured we could explain ourselves if and when we were questioned (which seemed unlikely), but then A used the phrase ‘Schrödinger’s dick’ (which later became the version you see above), and I thought that term was way too hilarious not to share.
> 
> A: Oh, also, Vimes in Snuff seems to enjoy giving Sybil oral sex, so I am extrapolating that he would also enjoy giving Nick oral sex. A cigar, a bottle of whiskey… he just likes putting his mouth on things. ;)
> 
> Both: **We love comments of all lengths, and understand the need for low-energy commenting like kudos. If you ever find yourself wanting to give us additional kudos, feel free to leave a comment of an icon or emoji of a heart!** <3


	9. Another Settlement

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Song: [Depth of Field](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYSB4q9sIrs&list=PLLEELrwJ-FyotucudE52BnFg6vVn1AGne&index=14&t=0s) by Whale Fall 
> 
> **We’ve created a Discord server for chatting about Discworld, Fallout, or this fic! It’s still in its infancy, but if anyone’s interested, it can be found at<https://discord.gg/6QM4Egy>**

_Another Settlement_

Sam and Nick stopped back by Sanctuary to check up on the place, resupply, and maybe find a bed to sleep in that wasn’t in a shared living space, out in the open, or cost them caps. The two were at a table near a hurriedly erected food stand. Sam had just finished dinner, which he had washed down with purified water, while Nick nursed a bourbon. Sam was checking his Pip-Boy, a device he sometimes rather curiously called a “dis-organizer” (not the worst name for it, given its complete lack of functional sorting abilities), to verify their route when they heard Preston Garvey utter what was fast becoming a dreaded phrase.

“There’s another settlement that needs our help. I hope you can get to them quickly.”

Sam closed his eyes and rubbed either side of the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger. “Of _course_ there is, Preston,” he sighed exhaustively. “How far out of the way is _this_ one from where we needed to be going?” 

“Here’s the coordinates for you-” Preston started with his usual routine of handing Sam coordinates to be entered into his Pip-Boy, then hesitated and blinked. He looked faintly confused for a moment, then said, “Actually, General, could you just let me see the map on that thing for a moment. Something just occurred to me.”

“Preston, I’m no general,” Sam argued, not for the first time, as he showed Preston the map. “If you’re going to insist on titles, why not ‘Commander’? That’s got a nice ring to it!”

The Minuteman gave Sam a good-humored grin. “Oh, I don’t know about that one. I’m pretty sure I only had the authority to make you General, not Commander, but I can double-check the regulations for you.”

“Oh, good gods, man!” Vimes exclaimed, exasperated. Preston gave him a curious look.

“‘Gods’?" asked Preston. "You know, that’s kind of unusual, but to each their own.” Nick swirled the remains of his drink around in his glass as the two bantered, but now he started to study Preston closely. Preston was now the first person after himself who even seemed to notice that quirk of Sam’s, though from his comment, he seemed to be noticing it for the first time.

“You know what?” Preston said thoughtfully as he looked at the map. “I’m pretty sure we’ve got a patrol in that area that can get there faster, because you’re right, it is kind of out of your way. I’ll get them on this one.”

Sam sighed in relief. “Thanks, Preston. You know I’ll help where I can, but we’ve got fires going on all over the map.”

Garvey winced slightly and admitted, “And I wasn’t making things any easier by not checking on this _before_ I came to you with it.” He shook his head. “I’ll try to be more careful about that.” He looked down at Sam. “If you don’t mind keeping me up to date on what your intended routes are when you’re coming through, that should make it easier for me to sort out what I should send your way and what I need to get others on.” He started to head off. “Anyway, I hope you rest up while you’re still here. You look like you could use it.”

“Thanks,” replied Sam dryly. 

Preston grinned. “Can’t have our General collapsing on us.” He glanced back towards Nick. “Take care of him, Nick.”

“I won’t start any trouble if he doesn’t,” Nick smirked, because of _course_ they were both going to start trouble. Preston chuckled as he left, and Nick was once more alone with Sam. He finished his drink, still thinking about what he had just witnessed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter has sexually explicit content. Feel free to skip it and rejoin us next week with chapter 11.
> 
> A: Sam’s internal monologue about Preston in previous chapters was a bit too hard on poor Preston, but Sam’s internal monologue is often too hard on people he doesn’t understand yet, and as of this point, he still doesn’t know what exactly Preston’s deal is.
> 
> S: Having fic Preston realize it’s a little ridiculous to expect one person to do _everything_ was just freaking cathartic for me. I know that Preston is the butt of a lot of the internet’s jokes about Fallout 4. My thought on the matter is that he’s a decent character who’s been made the delivery vehicle of a terrible game mechanic.
> 
> Holy cats, we got fanart! Huge thanks to [Jack of Legends](https://mercurialeveningstar.tumblr.com/) for this fantastic picture!
> 
> [ ](http://jaylyn.hypermart.net/vvart/VimesValentineFanartJackOfLegends.png)
> 
> **We love comments of all lengths, and understand the need for low-energy commenting like kudos. If you ever find yourself wanting to give us additional kudos, feel free to leave a comment of an icon or emoji of a heart!** <3


	10. Condom World (Explicit)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains **sexually explicit content**. If that’s not for you, feel free to skip and rejoin us next week with chapter 11.
> 
> **We’ve created a Discord server for chatting about Discworld, Fallout, or this fic! It’s still in its infancy, but if anyone’s interested, it can be found at<https://discord.gg/6QM4Egy>**

_Condom World (NSFW)_

They came across members of the Gunners gang, the Mechanist’s machines, and the Brotherhood of Steel fighting over an area that was as bombed out and dilapidated as anywhere but appeared to be slightly less picked over than many other areas, which, of course, necessitated the question, ‘Why?’ to which the answer turned out to be that there was a deathclaw living there. A deathclaw made even the most tempting of looting grounds much less interesting to anyone with any sense, which apparently the Gunners, the Mechanist’s machines, and this detachment of the Brotherhood of Steel all lacked. 

From the shadows where he lurked, unseen, Sam whispered, “So, plan is, we let them all kill each other and mop up the survivors, yeah?”

“Good plan,” said Nick, in the shadows behind him. 

Sam’s eyes roved around the scene until he saw broken shadows leading to a bombed out building with no door in its doorway. He made his move, and the darkness cloaked him, letting him sneak past the near-deafening fray as a Mr. Gutsy bellowed, “There's nothing I like better than making some other poor bastard die for his country!” at a Brotherhood of Steel Initiate. 

Inside the building, he found terminals. Those strange dis-organizers were not as confusing as they once were, but Sam was still clumsy with them. The sound of battle gradually ground down around him as enemy killed enemy. There was nothing much of interest in this terminal, he concluded, and he looked back at Nick to see if he had found anything better. 

Nick was not behind him. Sam scanned around, looking sidelong, and he saw the deathclaw through the open wall of the building, standing in the next building. Sam crouched down near the terminal, holding his breath. It hadn't seen him. If it had seen him, he would already be fighting for his life. 

Then he saw Nick, who clubbed at the deathclaw with a rifle. Sam stared, stunned, as the deathclaw fell over, dead. The sound of battle had quieted. Despite the fact that he was giving away his position, Sam threw up his hands and shouted, irate, “Nick, are you trying to get yourself killed?”

Nick pointed at the dead deathclaw and argued, “You said to take out the survivors when they were weakened. I took out the survivors when they were weakened!”

“That was a deathclaw!” Sam snapped. 

“Was a deathclaw,” Nick said smugly, pulling out a cigarette and lighting it. 

Sam put his hands on his hips and glared at Nick for a long moment. Then he closed the distance between them, grabbed Nick, dragged him down by the tie, and then shoved him up against a decrepit wooden wall to kiss him hard. Eventually, Sam had to break away for breath, and he seethed, “You could have died!”

“Sure. Either of us could die any day, but I hope we don’t, and we’re here now,” Nick said, still unrepentant. He put his hands on Sam’s hips.

Sam gave a heavy sigh and tucked his head under Nick’s chin and took a moment to quietly shake with anger. Then he pushed away and said loudly, “Some of these buildings looked relatively unlooted.” He stomped off to start just that.

‘Condom World’ one store sign read, the red on black letters faded. It was a half story set down into the ground, the guardrail for the stairs twisted. The glass was shattered. Nick started laughing when he saw it and made a straight beeline for it. Sam stomped after him, still on the lookout to see if any enemies were left alive.

The store inside had brick walls and a white and black chequered tile design. There was a poster on the wall, in the propaganda style that was all over the Commonwealth, warning about the dangers of loose women. The store had been lightly looted, but plenty of scavengable goods remained. Nick was already rifling through various items, shoving some on his pockets. Sam paused a moment as he looked at the items in the long-abandoned store, and he covered his mouth, blushing. “Oh. It’s a sonky shop.”

Sam approved of sonkies. Without them, Ankh-Morpork would have been much more over-populated than it already was. Anyway, he and Sybil had decided not to have any more children, and he had to pause a moment as his hands became fists as he thought about her death. Kellogg was dead, but Sam Vimes had been started, and Sam Vimes was not going to stop. The Institute didn’t know what was coming for it. Sam Vimes didn’t know what was coming for it, either, for that matter.

But there was Nick, clearly delighted that he had found a package of intact sonkies. He had one out of its slim packet and was playing with it with his fingers and exclaimed excitedly, “It’s still good! See, it still has its stretch. It hasn’t gone all brittle.”

“Yes?” queried Sam, snapped out of thoughts of vengeance. It was hard to darkly contemplate retribution when Nick was waving a sonky in his face.

“Yes!” said Nick. “It means you can stop making a mess of my neck! Not that I mind… but we could use some variety.”

“Er,” said Sam, feeling faintly alarmed.

Nick went through several different bottles of liquid, pouring a little on his fingers, and turned his nose up at the texture and smell of several. He commented disdainfully, “Good thing I’m not a silicone plastic… eugh.” Eventually, he found a bottle that he seemed to like, running a bit of it over his fingers. He then happily held that up in front of Sam. “Lube!”

“Is that a golem thing,” he said, although he knew well it wasn’t and was thusly unable to force the statement into a question. Sam and Sybil had both been getting older.

Nick seemed to know that Sam’s non-question hadn’t been serious, and he replied, “I guess it could be, if the golem in question wants to get laid.” He grabbed another two of the bottles and shoved them in his coat pocket. Then Nick frowned and looked concerned. “You okay there, doll?”

“Er,” said Sam, and he shook himself. “I just get a bit…” Nick waited. “...embarrassed.”

Nick continued to look concerned. “We certainly won’t do anything you don’t feel comfortable with.”

What Sam wanted to say was that wasn’t really the issue; Nick Valentine had been a perfect gentleman about Sam Vimes and his idiosyncratic limits. Now, Sam could talk about sex as it pertained to other people okay, but when it came to himself, there’d always been this sense of panic. Sam couldn’t even put together a good explanation of why, but he’d been the same way with Sybil for a long time before he’d been able to get through the simplest of things without being flustered. Maybe it had something to do with being neither fish nor fowl and with the thought, ever since he first started thinking about sex, that perhaps it would be better to take his sexuality and shove in a nice closet where no one could get in and cosh it with a brick in a sock or push it down the stairs. What Sam said was, “Er.”

Nick had taken out something that looked like a rubbery bullet, and whatever it was supposed to be doing, it seemed like it wasn’t. He let it drop on the floor and walked back over to take Sam by the arm. “Sorry about this. Let’s get out of here, then.”

“No!” Sam said, and he was sure his face was burning up. “I, ah… why don’t you tell me about that… variety we could use?” There he went, asking Nick to talk more about something that was sure to only redden the blush on his cheeks.

“Uhm. Well,” Nick looked openly dubious of Sam’s ability to actually have this conversation. “I really just wanted to suggest something simple, now I’d found some lube that hadn’t gone bad, y’know, like anal sex?”

There it was, the thing that worsened his blush and took away all the blood his legs were using to stand up straight. Sam thought he was going to pass out for a moment, and Nick caught him. The golem said regretfully, “...sorry I mentioned it.”

“Er. You mean… sodomy?” Sam said, in Nick’s arms.

Nick sighed heavily. “I shouldn’t have even brought it up.”

And yet. ‘Brought it up’. “I’m not… uninterested,” Sam managed to say, and he pushed up against Nick, who made a soft ‘oh’ noise. “Just let me sit down a bit. Continue as you were.”

Sam sat down and rubbed his temples. Nick did continue picking through the shelves, though he frequently looked back at Sam. He wanted to say that he knew he was skittish and balky and that he appreciated Nick not pushing him, he really did, but that there were things Sam wanted that his shame kept him from articulating. If Nick didn’t push Sam, Sam was never going to get those things. 

Nick was playing around with something that looked entirely unlike a purple rabbit. It seemed that its batteries were not only dead but corroded. Sam remained unsure how it was that ‘battery’, which was a sort of crime, made small machines run. It wasn’t that they seemed afraid of the threat.

Sam’s thoughts rephrased, because the thing was that, anyone who pushed someone who was looking and acting like Sam was looking and acting right now was someone that Sam wanted to arrest for sexual assault. Gods, how had Sybil put up with him? She'd been so patient. She had been perhaps the only woman who wouldn't make fun of him, when he’d been at his lowest. Sybil really couldn't have done worse, and he couldn't have done better. 

Now Nick Valentine, he deserved better, and it made Sam Vimes burn with anger that Nick couldn't _get_ better. He thought about Myrna and her small-minded, banal evil. He thought about the Brotherhood of Steel, which would kill Nick for what he was. He considered the Institute, which had used Nick for its own sinister purposes and then discarded him on the trash. Nick deserved better than this world had given him. 

Nick went through the holotape section, appearing unimpressed. He flipped through a few books and paused, looking at a fold out thoughtfully, head cocked. 

Sam thought, Nick at the very least deserved someone who could actually articulate what he wanted. He tried again, “Nick. Er. I appreciate, er, your… respect for my limits. I just, er…. get embarrassed easily.”

Nick said drily, “Yeah. You already said that,” but his expression was one of concern, as if Nick was worried that he had done something wrong. 

Sam took a breath and continued, “But me being…. skittish,” alarmed, panicked, even, “doesn't mean I want you to, er, stop.”

Nick put the book back on the shelf and said soberly, “Sam, you might not mean it that way, but I have to take it that way.”

“I understand that,” said Sam. “I respect that.” He did! Gods, did he respect Nick, and with Sam, that meant rather more than merely liking the golem man. “And I'm, er, making you uncomfortable with my discomfort, aren't I?”

“Hey. Don't you worry about me, sweetheart,” said Nick, because of course he did, but Sam knew that he was probably making the other man feel like a criminal. 

Sam could get angry and put a sword through a raider and end his life. Why was casual brutality so easy? Why was simply talking with Nick about something that was probably pretty enjoyable, that hurt no one, so difficult? “I’m just, er. Having trouble… admitting what I want. Er.”

Nick sighed. “Doll, I don't _like_ making you feel this uncomfortable, no. Take what time you need.”

They might not have tomorrow, there was the thought, followed by the thought that there were some things Sam wanted _yesterday._ Wouldn't it have been nice to have Nick there, up against that wall, over the deathclaw’s body, as the corpses of idiot Brotherhood of Steel soldiers cooled in the streets? No, it wouldn't have been _nice_ , it would have been down and dirty and hot and hard, and Sam was sure he could have made Nick moan, made him beg, and the want was there, even as the words failed him. He flipped it around in his head, and Sam was sure he would have been just as satisfied with the roles reversed. 

“Time. Uhm. Yes,” said Sam. “When I get like this, don’t just, er, dismiss what you're saying? Just… give me a minute?”

Nick nodded. He chewed his lip and considered. “This might be a bad suggestion, here, but uh… you want to try ‘yellow’ for ‘give me a moment’ and ‘red’ for ‘hard stop, no more’? Because I guess that's kind of what we're getting confused here, your hard stops and when you just want a moment, and yellow and red are simple and easy to say little words, even if you're feeling… flustered.”

Sam gave Nick a blank look, because there was another cultural reference here Nick was clearly expecting him to understand that he didn't. “And what's, er, go on?”

“Yes,” Nick said softly, “or green.”

“Yes. Green,” said Sam, tasting the word. Go on, then… It felt a bit silly, but it just might work. He stood up and strode over to stand beside Nick and look around his shoulder at the book he was holding. “... that's a Mr. Handy.”

“Ms. Nanny,” Nick corrected. 

Sam scowled. “There's no way you can know that.”

“Sure I can,” said Nick, insufferably. He closed the book and showed Sam the title. “It’s lesbian porn.”

Sam glared at the know-it-all golem detective who wasn’t always right but who was often right when he had no business at all being right. Nick put his arm around Sam’s hips and gave him a little kiss on the cheek. “Doing better, doll?”

Sam grunted and shrugged. That sure was a ridiculous thing for a man who ate deathclaw steak - badly cooked; he was never a good cook, and Nick was no help there - for dinner to have such a hang-up over, wasn’t it? Sitting on the floor of a sonky shop and having a right meltdown. But now he was standing, even if he sort of needed Nick’s arm around him to keep standing.

Nick paged through a different book, and Sam glanced at it. He was blushing again, he knew, but he tapped one page and queried, “Green?” He wasn’t sure if he was using the word correctly as Nick had meant it, but ‘green’ was easier than putting the words together to say, ‘I, er, want to, er, try that. PleaseDon’tMakeFunOfMeForBeingAPatheticBugger,’ ludicrous as ‘green’ was. Gods, he didn’t know how Nick kept from laughing at him.

Nick looked at the position critically and admitted, “I don’t think my old joints could handle that, but you’re pretty flexible, aren’t you? Yeah, I’ve seen you fit through some tight spaces...” Nick gave him a squeeze, and Sam leaned against him. Sam pointed out a few more positions in the book that he thought looked interesting, and Nick put the book away in his pocket.

Sam Vimes, terror of the Commonwealth, had successfully managed to communicate with his… boyfriend? about what he wanted in bed. Yes. 

Then they found a bed in the ruins, and he let Nick lay him down, because Sam had been thinking, and as much as he thought having Nick up against the wall looked good - he told himself, he’d get there - he thought that not thinking at all might do him for a start. Sam Vimes was, at times, a man determined to shut down his own brain. The gods knew, he’d tried hard enough at that with alcohol.

Nick had off Sam’s pants and underwear, and he had a scavenged rubber glove on his left, synth flesh hand. His metal hand was on the inside of Sam’s thigh, as Nick went down on him, lightly teasing Sam’s cock with his lips and tongue. Nick lubed up a gloved finger and just pressed it against Sam’s arse. He didn’t push, he just sort of rubbed there, and Sam honestly had a hard time noticing what was going on there, what with Nick’s mouth on his cock.

Sam did notice when, after the pressing and rubbing, his arse apparently relaxed enough to let Nick get the first part of his finger in. His eyes widened, and the thought, unbidden crossed his mind: why did sex have to bear such a strong resemblance to certain Klatchian ideas of medical screening? Nick paused a moment, but Sam growled, “Keep going.”

Yes, he wanted Nick in him, yes, he wanted to be in Nick, yes, sort of wanted both at the same time, and despite what the book showed, no, Sam did not think he was flexible enough for that, so this was a good start for now. After more distracting licking and kissing and gentle pressing, Nick pulled out his finger, lubed it up again, and returned it to Sam’s arse. At some point, Sam became aware that Nick was in to his second knuckle. He squirmed, and his hand found the back of Nick’s head.

There was Nick’s tongue on his frenulum, as Nick came out and lubed up his finger a third time, and then, there was Nick’s finger in him, deep to the third knuckle, stroking something that felt unexpectedly good. He bucked up against Nick, and he would have felt guilty about how deep that put his cock down Nick’s throat, but the golem man didn’t have any gag reflex, anyway.

Sam arched back and up as Nick’s finger stroked inside him. He whimpered. At some point, Nick worked a second finger in there, and the sensation of stretch had him panting. Nick, of course, never broke a sweat, not that he could. He took a break to ask, “You doing okay, sweetheart?”

Gods, who could look at Sam Vimes and call him ‘sweetheart’? Who could look at the blood on his hands and the rage in his eyes and the killing sword on his hip and the darkness in his mind and still find tender endearment on his lips?

“Yes, yes...” Sam said hazily, tilting his hips up at Nick’s hand, beckoning him.

Eventually, there was a third finger in his arse. “No discomfort?”

“Just a little, but don’t stop, oh, don’t stop,” Sam insisted.

“Hmm,” Nick said thoughtfully, giving his fingers another wiggle. “I think I could fit now, if you wanted to finish it off that way, though I understand if you’re not up for that.”

“Please?” said Sam weakly, and he clarified, “Er. Please do.” _Please_. That was a word not often in his vocabulary, but something about Nick made him want to beg.

Sybil had been able to make him feel that way. Sam had been happy to stand at attention for her and to go down on his knees.

Nick’s fingers were out of him, and Sam felt momentarily cheated. Nick rolled Sam on his side and spooned up behind him. He discarded the rubber glove off to the side and reached around to rub Sam’s cock with his synth flesh hand. Nick’s own cock had a sonky on it, and the tip pressed against Sam’s arse. He rubbed back and forth a little, the shaft between Sam’s cheeks, until Sam pushed himself back against Nick, taking Nick inside him. His eyes widened again, and he took a moment, panting hard. Nick stroked Sam’s cock, not hard enough to make him come, just teasingly. 

Besides, Sam _wanted_ to come on Nick’s cock, wanted that like burning, and he pushed back against Nick a bit more, trying to see how much he could handle. There were points where he’d tighten up, despite himself, despite how Nick had stretched him with his fingers, and Sam would make Nick gasp. Wickedly, he tried it intentionally, tightening on Nick’s cock, and the cursing he drew out of the golem man was every bit as sweet as Nick’s rambled comments of, ‘I love you,’ were.

Sam didn’t quite manage to hilt Nick before his lover pulled out and applied more lube, but on their second go around, Sam did take Nick, all of Nick, back arched and hips pushed back against him. Yes, Nick did fit now. He fit very well. He fit well enough to slide in and out and rub up against that spot that felt so bloody good, and it was absolutely unfair how sodding satisfying it felt when Nick ground his cock inside him. Sam bucked back up against Nick as Nick pumped inside him and stroked his cock, and in the end, it was a surprise to Sam that he lasted as long as he did before coming.

A sheen of sweat covered Sam head to toe. Nick pulled out of Sam and tidied up around with a scavenged towel and laid out a second towel under Sam’s well-used arse. Then he cuddled up against Sam, nipping at the nape of his neck. Nick checked in, “Everything okay, doll?”

There was the thought that Sam was not okay, that he was, in fact, fucked up beyond recognition, as some more salty sorts might put it, and that he had absolutely loved every moment of it, and he wanted Nick to do that again to him very soon. The thought made him blush, and he said, “Er. Yes. Uhm. _Yes._ ”

“Okay, sweetheart,” Nick chuckled, and he kissed the back of Sam’s head, wrapped his arms around him, and gave him a squeeze.

Sam slept, and shagged out as he was, he slept very well indeed. He was not, as he had expected, sore at all in the morning. Nick had been very gentle with him, even when Sam hadn’t been gentle with Sam. Not even the rads were bothering him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> S: The incident described at the beginning of the chapter is based (roughly) on something that happened to me in-game, although it was more on the outskirts of civiliation rather than… wherever Condom World is (A actually looked up sex shops in Boston, so I think it’s real). There was a three way fight between two groups of humans (I think it was actually Brotherhood and some raiders, but whatever, here it’s gunners) and a Deathclaw (or was it two? I think there was one legendary one and one ordinary one there, it was a pain). My plan was to sit and watch them fight it out and deal with whatever cleanup there was to deal with, but as the fight was winding down I turned around and saw that Nick had decided to go MELEE fight a Deathclaw on his own. I started running over thinking “Dammit, I’m going to need to stim pack him,” but before I got a couple of steps, he just… punched it out.
> 
> A: Condom World is indeed a real place, with images on google images.
> 
> S: By the way, the propaganda poster came from Fallout New Vegas. It may even be NCR instead of pre-war, but it amused us, so now it is a pre-war propaganda poster. I can't imagine the pre-war military was all that thrilled when their soldiers picked up STDs either, I mean, the real world one sure isn't.
> 
> We love comments of all lengths, and understand the need for low-energy commenting like kudos. If you ever find yourself wanting to give us additional kudos, feel free to leave a comment of an icon or emoji of a heart! <3


	11. The Guarding Dark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter song: [Malignant Cloud](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9-MOKcBb9w&list=PLLEELrwJ-FyotucudE52BnFg6vVn1AGne&index=15&t=0s) by Swami Lateplate
> 
> **We’ve created a Discord server for chatting about Discworld, Fallout, or this fic! It’s still in its infancy, but if anyone’s interested, it can be found at<https://discord.gg/6QM4Egy>**

_The Guarding Dark_

Alf Nealy proved unable to find that second mine sign anywhere in the easily searched portions of the library. He also showed the sign at Gimlet's Hole Food Delicatessen, at which, one dwarf standing in line had hazarded that he’d maybe seen the sign before but that it was new, and then he’d clammed up and refused to discuss it with a human. No other dwarf would say anything about it. Alf brought back a ‘Klatchian Hots’ pizza with salami, anyway, which Chatur vehemently denied as being Klatchian at all and then proceeded to eat more than half of it.

“New,” said Ponder thoughtfully, and he entered some search queries into Hex. Weezencake's Unreliable Algorithm took years to put together a single page of an unwritten book, if cast by human wizards, but Hex could cast it thousands of times a second. A few moments later, he handed a sheaf of papers to Alf.

Alf sat down at one of the cubby desks to pore over the not-so-invisible writings, which were fragments of a book by Bashfull Bashfullsson, written about forty years from when Alf was reading it. One page had the same symbol that Ponder had tasked Alf with deciphering, and the caption read,

> Also known as the Watchman. The only entity that can master, defeat, and contain the brooding vengeful violence of the Summoning Dark. Where the Summoning Dark goes, the Guarding Dark follows, at its own steady inexorable pace. Wherever the Watchman goes, he brings his lantern, dispelling the night.
> 
> May be part of a divine/demonic trinity/unity, in the fashion of the Maiden, Mother, and Crone, consisting of the Summoning Dark, the Guarding Dark, and -

The page broke off there, and Alf’s hand cramped, anyway, writing all that out quickly for Ponder. Alf beamed at the Faculty wizard and said, “See, it’s the Guarding Dark! Or it will be, anyway.”

Ponder looked at Alf’s transcription and seemed unusually worried for someone who made a living off Inadvisably Applied Magic. “Uhm. Thank you, Alf. Bonus points on… what are you in that I’m teaching?”

“It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine): the Mage Wars; The Anthropomorphic Manifestation of Computing; Morpork Unnatural History, Conservation, and Captive Management; Language, Freedom, and Faith in Optics and Quantum Technomancy; Collaboration, Migration, and Teleology in Contemporary Iconography…” started Alf.

Ponder waved him off and said, unusually short, “Fine, just pick a class you’re in that I’m teaching and give yourself some extra credit.” He looked over the transcription again. “The Guarding Dark, the Watchman…”

“Nice!” said Alf, pleased with himself. Those points would be going straight into Language, Freedom, and Faith in Optics and Quantum Technomancy, which was a complete bore of a class. “So, why’d you want this, anyway?”

“Never you mind,” said Ponder. “Get back to your… shipping?”

“Xian’s the shipper! And a bit of Zinon,” Alf protested, “I’m in it for the action. And because this project satisfies some of the course requirements for It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine): the Mage Wars. Anyway, you ought to have seen this V.A.T.S. hammer sweep that the Sole Survivor got in. Took a raider’s head clean off and then smashed into two more raiders besides. Hah! It was sick.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter has sexually explicit content. Feel free to skip it and rejoin us next week with chapter 13. If anyone’s concerned about the shorter chapter length, rest assured that we’ll be getting back to normal soon.
> 
> We have more fanart, because [Jack of Legends](https://mercurialeveningstar.tumblr.com/) appears intent to spoil us. Thanks so much, Jack! This is lovely!
> 
> **We love comments of all lengths, and understand the need for low-energy commenting like kudos. If you ever find yourself wanting to give us additional kudos, feel free to leave a comment of an icon or emoji of a heart!** <3


	12. Lover’s Embrace Perk (Explicit)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains **sexually explicit content**. If that’s not for you, feel free to skip and rejoin us next week with chapter 13.
> 
> **We’ve created a Discord server for chatting about Discworld, Fallout, or this fic! Feel free to join us at<https://discord.gg/6QM4Egy>**

_Lover’s Embrace Perk_

Sex was, at the very least, a wonderful way of blowing off steam after a close battle. Besides, Sam had the odd sensation that he made more progress in his searching after he’d spent some time in Nick’s embrace. It was probably just that Nick tended to make sure that Sam actually slept and would, at times, refuse to let Sam go on until he’d properly rested. 

“You had an hour-long nap last night, too! C’mon, Sam, at least put down for a good seven hours this time,” Nick argued.

“I know how long I can keep going,” said Sam, and he did.

Nick gave him a very dubious look. “Pretty sure this here is a marathon, not a sprint. C’mon, let’s get you to bed; there was a mattress a few floors back.”

Another building cleared of raiders. Sam could grant the wasteland its mole rats and yao guai and deathclaws, but did humanity have to go and be the most blighting pest in the world? Of course it did. Still, other humans and synths, too, would be safer now.

They found that old mattress, and Nick grabbed Sam’s collar and sat down, pulling Sam down with him. Sam ended up on Nick’s lap, and he went in for a kiss. Whoever in the Institute had made Nick had done a very decent job of getting his lips kissable and his mouth and tongue to feel good against Sam’s own, the right mix of firm and yielding. The metal teeth did tend to feel a little cold, and they were always slick and smooth and sharp, never chipped or dulled by a lifetime’s wear, but Sam could get used to them. They were just a little detail to be careful about; to make sure he didn’t cut his tongue on them when he explored Nick’s mouth.

He broke away for a moment, and Nick kissed along his neck. Sam generally didn’t let other men with sharp metal objects get up that close on his neck. He wouldn’t even let his own butler shave him, although that was one part not wanting Willikins that close to his neck with a sharp object and another part that Sam Vimes still wanted to be his own man and not some pampered noble.

“Nick?” Sam asked. “Before I get off to sleep, could I try riding you beneath the cropper?”

Nick took his lips off Sam’s neck and half-covered his face with his metal hand and groaned, “Look, if that’s a sex thing, _probably_ , but I _don’t_ understand your sex slang, uhm, at all? We keep going over this…”

There were many baffling communication gaps between them, and this was one of them. Sam tried again, “Oh come on, a rousing game of backgammon?”

Nick pulled out a sonky and the bottle of lube and narrowed his glowing eyes. “Hey Sam, how about this, you can fuck me in the ass _if_ you say, ‘Nick, I want to fuck you in the ass.’”

Sam blushed and shifted how he was sitting on Nick’s lap, increasingly aware that they were both, er, happy to see each other, despite the communication issues. He argued, “Nick, ‘ass’ is a word for spinsters and children.”

“Boy, I hope not, in this sense. Look, d’ya want to get laid or not?” said Nick, who set aside the sonky and the lube and put his hands on Sam’s hips.

“...yes, I just think you’re being ridiculous,” said Sam. “I mean, you clearly understood what I was asking -”

Nick’s glowing yellow eyes bored into him. “Y’know what, I think I’ll just run a diagnostic -”

“Uhm, wait - Nick, could I… er…” Why did Nick have to be so _profane_ about it? It was only a perfectly natural unnatural act…

Nick did run that diagnostic, and he was out for a few seconds before he came back to, and Sam managed to mumble out what Nick had asked him to. Nick leaned in, put his synthflesh hand on Sam’s face, thumb stroking across Sam’s cheek, and he asked, “Now, was that so hard?”

Sam looked away and crossed his arms and sulked. Then Nick reached down and unbuckled his belt and pulled his pants slightly down. Sam hadn’t actually seen Nick properly naked yet, having seen not even as high as Nick’s navel, if he had one, and not even as far down as his knees, but then, it wasn’t like they’d had a chance to bed down with each other in a particularly safe area. There was always the fear that another group of raiders or a group of Gunners or Brotherhood of Steel or a deathclaw or anything, really, could stumble in on them. Still, if they made it back somewhere fairly safe, like Diamond City, Sam wanted to see Nick in the altogether. He’d make a point of it. It felt farcical, that he’d seen Nick’s meat and veg and backdoor and not his ankles, let alone his knees.

Besides, Nick had seen Sam almost entirely naked, even if that was only because some of the armour he’d found worked oddly at times. Sam unbelted his own pants, and he asked, “Could you er, get up against that wall, actually? Uhm, facing me for now, though I’ll have you turn in a bit...”

Nick stood for him and advised, “You’re going to want to use a lot of lube.”

“You do this, er, often?” Sam asked. He felt… vaguely jealous, he supposed? Nick was likable, Nick had plenty of friends in Diamond City, Nick even had friends over in Goodneighbor...

Nick laughed. “No. Not at all. I just know I’m made out of _plastic_.”

“Not at all?” Sam asked, pulling on a rubber glove and lubing up his fingers.

“I thiiiink the original Nick Valentine had a boyfriend, years before Jenny? Good-looking soldier, went away to die in the Sino-American War,” said Nick, who looked down speculatively at Sam.

Sam knew he was, to these people, supposed to have been a soldier in that Sino-American war, and he knew that he wasn’t. Nick’s synthflesh skin was grey, but it was pliant to his touch much like any skin, he supposed. He knelt in front of Nick and tentatively pushed against Nick’s arsehole with a gloved, lubed finger. He tried to play around a bit, the way that Nick would play around with him. While he worked on working in a finger, he let himself be distracted by Nick’s cock and licked up along the shaft of it.

Sucking on Nick was a welcome diversion while he worked on trying to get Nick’s arsehole to relax a bit, to see if he could fit in a second lubed up finger. That took a while, and it took longer still to get in a third finger, and Sam had to slow down with taking Nick’s cock in his mouth, had to swirl his tongue a bit less against Nick’s head, because he didn’t want Nick to come quite yet.

No, he wanted Nick to come with Sam’s cock in his arse, up against that old wall. That particular fantasy had been playing out in his mind recently, and unlike the fantasy of a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich in this forsaken place, this fantasy seemed at least somewhat attainable.

“You wanna go for it now, doll?” Nick asked, ruffling Sam’s hair.

Sam didn’t need to be asked twice, stretching a sonky onto his cock as he stood. He had Nick turn back around and spread his legs out; Nick was taller than Sam, and that leg spread moved Nick down a bit, to put his arsehole at the right height to meet Sam’s eager and well-lubed cock. Sam put one hand on Nick’s hip and the other on his cock as he pushed into Nick, at first just his head.

This was Sam’s first time having Nick this particular way, and what hit first was that Nick was _tight_ , and Sam was well-aware that tighter was not always better, sometimes far from it, but he couldn’t help pushing a bit deeper into Nick almost immediately, and maybe that was too quick, because Nick hissed slightly, and Sam could feel him tense up, even through his clothing. Nick didn’t quite tense up like a human; there weren’t muscles under his plastic skin. Under the plastic, there was, as far as Sam could tell, a layer of foam, where the fat ought to have been, and then under that, mechanical actuators. Nick’s movements could be beautifully fluid, but up this close, there was a minute choppiness, the step by step re-angulation of what Nick called servomotors and pistons.

Then there was another slight hiss, this one more pneumatic, and Nick relaxed a bit and pushed back against Sam. Sam was only too glad of that, kissing between where Nick’s shoulder-blades would have been, if his metal skeleton was arranged that way. He tried to pace himself and take Nick slowly, but it was difficult not to get caught up in the thrill. There were definite moments where he’d push too hard or too quickly or just at a poor angle and Nick would flinch or make a little noise that wasn’t entirely pleased, but when that happened, Nick would reposition himself, even reaching back with his synth flesh hand to move Sam, or he’d comment, “...aim’s a lil’ off there, Sam. I think you need some more practice…”

“I’m up for more practice,” agreed Sam easily, nuzzling the back of Nick’s neck as he tried to see if he could pump a bit faster. Nick was tight, and the texture was… different and _intense._ Hells, but it was good. Sam reached around to give Nick’s cock a stroke and found Nick’s metal hand there, to his surprise. His fingers closed over Nick’s metal ones, as he hazily wondered over the fact that Nick had enough delicacy with his metal hand to satisfy himself that way. Nick always used his synthflesh hand with Sam. What would it be like, that metal digging into his skin?

Feeling a certain grittiness to his movement, Sam pulled out and lubed up again and then re-entered Nick and thrust in deeper and harder. Nick pushed back against him and squeezed most obligingly, his arse accommodating Sam’s hard, throbbing cock. Sam was close, heady with lust and dripping with sweat, but he found the presence of mind to say, “Nick, ah… you near, yet?”

Hells, but he wanted Nick to come on his cock, up against this wall, and maybe Sam couldn’t have that now, maybe he’d come first, and he’d have to give Nick a consolatory handjob, but it couldn’t hurt to ask.

“Not too far, if you just push a bit more _up_ , that should do the trick,” said Nick, who moved his hips a bit, and Sam couldn’t tell if that made it easier or harder on him, but it made it.

He stood there a while panting after he’d come, and he leaned heavily against Nick, who in turn leaned heavily against the wall in the afterglow of his own orgasm. Nick was, he reflected, a bit less messy to bugger than Sam was, although the used sonky still had to come off, and he still had to towel himself down before he was clean enough to pull back up his smallclothes and his trousers. Nick turned around and kissed him and then watched to see that Sam laid down and slept. It was a good seven hours. Nick made sure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> S: So I'm going to admit that I was a little bit iffy about having Sam use Victorian sex slang, since Discworld character language can be very modern at times, but... it's funny, so it stays.
> 
>  **We love comments of all lengths, and understand the need for low-energy commenting like kudos. If you ever find yourself wanting to give us additional kudos, feel free to leave a comment of an icon or emoji of a heart!** <3


	13. Valentine’s Day * Not a Normal Girl * The Concept of Privacy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter song: [Coin Operated Boy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4gPZPKJc0s&list=PLLEELrwJ-FyotucudE52BnFg6vVn1AGne&index=16&t=0s) by The Dresden Dolls
> 
> **We’ve created a Discord server for chatting about Discworld, Fallout, or this fic! Feel free to join us at<https://discord.gg/6QM4Egy>**

_Valentine’s Day * Not a Normal Girl * The Concept of Privacy_

Nick had noticed Sam’s fondness for pillows, possibly because Sam kept unsuccessfully trying to use the golem’s flat chest for one, burying his face against the grey synth flesh stretched over metal, and had scavenged up three intact pillows with which Sam had made the smallest, saddest pillow fort. According to the Pip-Boy, Sam had been in this nightmare world for 114 days, since what was strangely called October 23, 2287. It was now February 14, 2288. He had skipped Ick and Offle and had something instead called January, which had certainly been icky and awful, anyway, with rad storms and gunners and super mutant suiciders. Sam unburied himself from the pathetic little pillow fort and checked his notes on his Pip-Boy, trying to decide which of the various Commonwealth disasters that had been dumped upon him was most pressing to solve today.

Nick was already up and dressed, and he had, for no reason at all that Sam could fathom, gathered a little bouquet of hubflowers. Seeing that Sam was up, Nick sat back down on the bed, put and arm around Sam’s shoulders, and leaned in for a kiss, which Sam granted, although he was puzzled. “Uhm. Morning?” There was certainly nothing good about it. There was the sound of gunfire in the distance, and worse, Sam was used to it. When had he become used to the sound of gunfire?

“Well, you’ve already got your Valentine,” said Nick cheekily, holding out the bouquet of hub flowers.

Sam stared at Nick blankly.

Nick stared back. "... How do you not get that joke? I know it was bad, but..." His hand holding the bouquet trembled.

Sam’s expression softened. Nick was clearly expecting _some_ response out of him that he didn’t know how to give, so he took the bouquet and directed, “Explain?”

“Well, doll, I don’t know where to start. Valentine’s Day?” He paused, as if expecting recognition and found none. “Saint Valentine was a priest who was said to have performed secret weddings for those who were otherwise barred from marrying. He performed a miracle, restoring the sight of a blind girl, and her father, a judge, released those who had been unjustly imprisoned as a result of religious persecution. When Saint Valentine was asked to renounce his faith, he refused and was executed by beheading.”

Sam tried to process. “What’s that have to do with the kissing and the flowers?”

“In his memory, we take this day of his martydom to celebrate our loved ones. Wish I could have scrounged you up some chocolate… or even coffee, at this rate,” said Nick.

Sam could not connect the dots from beheading to the hubflowers in his hand. It was too early in the morning, but he didn’t think it was going to make any more sense in the afternoon. “Uhm. Thanks. Happy Valentine’s Day? Now, there’s a settlement not far from here that has been running into problems with raiders…”

* * *

A message came in on the Pip-Boy radio from Ellie Perkins to come and see her about a new case. In returning to Diamond City, Nick and Sam happened to see a small wedding between Miss Edna and Mr. Zwicky, overseen by Pastor Clements. Nick and Sam paused from afar to watch, and Nick slipped his arm around Sam’s waist.

Miss Edna asked, “Darling, are you sure about this? I am... not a normal girl.”

Mr. Zwicky fairly appeared to be glowing as he said happily, “My dear, you're perfect. I only wish I had realized that sooner.”

Pastor Clements nodded, beaming, and confirmed, “Then by the power invested in me, I pronounce you man and wife!”

Sam leaned against Nick, and Nick grinned. “What a lovely ceremony. That was some good advice you gave Miss - er, Mrs. Edna.”

Sam shrugged and made a noncommittal noise. 

The newly Mrs. Edna hovered over to Sam, having spotted him watching, and she effused, “You helped me make a very big decision. Thank you. I think I know what this ‘love’ is now.”

“Yes. Er. I’m glad that you two got yourselves sorted out,” said Sam awkwardly.

“Congratulations!” added Nick.

Edna looked back to her new husband, gushed, “I'm so happy,” and floated back to Zwicky, who took her by the… graspers and declared, “I don't care what anyone says. We're in love.”

The two newlyweds went off together, and once they were well on their way to their home together, Pastor Clements murmured, “Been awhile since we had a wedding. Man and a robot... Strange... But I don't think God will mind.”

Nick looked to Sam and asked, “Y’mind if I stop in the All Faiths Chapel just a moment? I won’t take long.”

“All Faiths? Hm, reminds me of Small Gods,” mused Sam, who shrugged and gestured that he didn’t mind.

Nick ducked into the chapel, and he dithered. Again, there were too many pieces missing or wrong: the type of the chapel, the type of the priest, and his own nature. He’d told Sam that he wasn’t going to take long, and so he got down on one knee, genuflecting, because it wasn’t like doing this wrong could possibly hurt. Quietly, despite the possibility that he had precisely as much soul as a toaster, Nick Valentine confessed his sins.

He became aware that Sam had followed him in and was standing behind him. Sam observed, voice dangerously neutral, “You think what you’re doing with me is wrong.”

Nick stood in a hurry and whirled around, the bottom of his trenchcoat flaring around him, and he corrected, “I think it’s a sin. I don’t think it’s wrong.”

If sexual orientation was innately created and if certain sexual orientations were also innately a tendency towards evil, it would require believing in a sadistic God. Despite the fact that he was living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, despite the slavery, the people-snatching, the bigotry, the cannibalism, Nick Valentine did not want to believe that of God.

“I don’t follow,” said Sam, still very flatly.

Nick sighed. “I’m Catholic.” Sort of. A dead man was Confirmed. Nick never had been. “The main center of my faith was destroyed during the European-Middle Eastern War. One might, perhaps, take that as an indication that God found something lacking with the standard teachings. It’s just… there’s no one left to say what might have changed, if things had gone differently.”

“Ah,” said Sam, realization dawning in his eyes, “You’re one of those people with a religion that makes you miserable. Like the Nugganites. Nuggan banned chocolate, you know? And garlic. And babies...”

Nick crossed his arms, and his lower lip jutted out slightly. “It’s not like that.” He had also never heard of Nuggan, and he considered himself fairly well-read. “Look, uhm, I love you, you know that, right? And I’m not going to do anything different with you, I just… look, Catholics aren’t supposed to use contraception, either, y’know?”

“Sounds stupid,” said Sam bluntly.

Nick glared at Sam and continued, “But there were plenty of Catholic girls who’d use it, anyway, and just say some Hail Mary’s weekly.”

“So it’s an excuse for self-flagellation?” asked Sam.

Nick crossed his arms and looked away. “I don’t expect you to understand. You’re a pagan.”

“I’m a what?” said Sam, puzzled.

“You’re always swearing by multiple gods,” pointed out Nick.

“Yes, because I don’t want any one of them in specific to get jealous,” said Sam, matter-of-fact. “I just acknowledge that they exist. It’s not like I believe in them.”

Nick sighed wearily. “Well, to paraphrase C. S. Lewis, better a good pagan than a bad Christian. Again, Sam, this isn’t any slight on you, you’re the best thing to happen to the Commonwealth in… longer than I can remember. And the best thing to happen to me. Please.” He closed the distance between them and took Sam’s hands in his own. “I don’t think you’re doing anything wrong.” Worst case scenario, Nick Valentine was a soulless machine, and all Sam Vimes was doing was enjoying a particularly complicated multifunctional sex toy, which only counted as masturbation, but even if his self-confidence was often lacking, Nick’s mind rebelled against the likelihood of that scenario. Maybe he didn’t have a soul, but surely, he was more than just a machine.

Cynical, perceptive Sam caught that wording and called Nick on it with, “But you’re afraid that you are?”

Nick shuttered his optics guiltily. 

Sam, who was still holding his hands, pulled him in close, and he growled, “You’re a better man than I am, and you’re being very silly. Now kiss me.”

Nick’s optics fluttered open, and he kissed Sam, who grabbed his lapels and hauled him down into the kiss until Sam had rendered himself breathless and had to break away. Nick’s fans whined. They were two consenting adults who were granting each other a little solace in a land of devastation and betrayal. Maybe it was a sin, but it certainly wasn’t wrong.

Upon reaching the agency, Ellie looked to Nick and Sam and speculated, “So Eddie Winter finally got his. Now hopefully Nick'll stop playing those damned tapes at all hours of the night.”

Nick shot a sly look at Sam and said, “Hey now, I've already found new noises to make at night.” Certainly, Nick felt conflicted about the incongruence between his sexuality and his faith, but as he’d told Sam, he wasn’t going to do anything different with regards to Sam. He loved him, and that was that. If he was damned, he already lived in Hell on Earth.

Ignoring or perhaps not even noticing the flirting, Sam asked, “Who's our client?”

Ellie explained, “A fisherman whose family lives on the edge of the Commonwealth. Kenji Nakano.”

Nick tried to think, rubbing his chin. “Nakano. That name takes me back. Hmm... My memory's a little fuzzy on the details, though.”

Ellie _tsked_ , “Maybe if you bothered writing things down, Nick…”

Nick teased, “Can't do that. Wouldn't want to put you out of a job.”

Sam looked genuinely bewildered and asked, “You’re bad at writing notes, Nick? What does actually being good at writing notes look like?”

Nick couldn’t help but poke fun, even if it was at himself, “Hey, make your standards low enough, doll, and you’ll never be disappointed.”

Ellie, though, still teased right back on Nick’s initial topic, “Huh. I'll remember that next time you need me to console a hysterical client. Mister Nakano didn't leave many details. Said he'd go over everything when you meet him. But if you want my guess? Missing person case. Guy had a worried look a mile long.”

Sam muttered to himself, despairing, “I’m never going to have enough RadX and RadAway or scavenge up a complete Power Armor suit, am I?” Then he coughed and said more loudly, “Er. Yes. That sure is a case. We’ll look into it, Ellie.”

Ellie continued, “The Nakano Residence is up in the Northeast, near the coast. A small fishing house. He said that he and his wife will be waiting for you.”

“It's a long walk,” said Nick, chuckling ruefully, “That's how the hard cases always start…”

Sam asked, all business, “Anything you can tell me about Kenji Nakano?”

Ellie said, “Just some impressions. He was obviously upset but he was also in a hurry, like he couldn't stand just waiting around. 'I'm a friend of Nick's. He'll remember me. I need his help right away.' And then he was gone. He was muttering something on the way out, but no... I'm not sure it was important…” 

Sam asked, “What wasn’t important?”

Ellie shook her head. “No... No, I can't remember clearly. Don't want to taint the investigation before it's even started…”

Sam looked over a note that Ellie had left, in case they had come in and found her out on her own business.

> CASE: Old Friend in Need?
> 
> Client: Kenji Nakano
> 
> Nick,
> 
> A Mister Kenji Nakano came into the office while you were out. He says he knows you, and that he needs your help again. I've never seen him before. Old client of yours? I tried looking through the archived cases, but... Nick, let's just say I'm glad I took over the bookkeeping.
> 
> Anyway, Mister Nakano said he wanted to talk with you personally about his case, but it didn't take the greatest detective in the Commonwealth to tell what was wrong. That worried, been-up-for-days look he was wearing tells me we've got another missing person case on our hands. Poor fella.
> 
> The Nakano Residence is up in the Northeast, near the coast. A small fishing house. He said that he and his wife will be waiting for you. I also told him about your new partner, in case one of you decides to go up there on your own.
> 
> Be careful, though, the coast is a pretty dangerous area. I think they might be all alone up there.
> 
> Hope you can help them,
> 
> Ellie

While Sam looked at that note, it dawned upon Nick that Sam had taken his notes on the Mysterious Stranger. In fact, Sam had taken them right in front of Nick, a few weeks ago, and Nick hadn’t done anything about it. He wondered why he hadn’t said anything, and then he noticed that the notes were right where he’d left them. Wondering if his memory was playing tricks on him, Nick asked, “Sam, do you still have my notes on the Stranger?”

“Eh? Right here, I think…” said Sam, rummaging through his bag and producing the notes.

Nick held up the identical set of notes, which were right where he’d left them. Sam and Nick compared the two sets of notes, baffled. Nick felt a slight edge of panic, and he could see it in Sam’s eyes, as well. Nick faltered, “So you took my notes -”

“You didn’t object!” protested Sam.

Nick waved it off. “You took my notes, you still have my notes, and yet, my notes are also right here. In my handwriting. On my paper.”

“I used to be generally aware of a very good forger,” said Sam, chewing his lips.

“But why!? Who would know that I had these notes and that you’d taken them and then go to the trouble of copying them? And why?” sputtered Nick.

“I am going to go out for a Girls’ Night Out,” said Ellie Perkins, very deliberately. Coincidentally, she was also the only person who could conceivably know that Sam had taken the notes and might have read them previously, to be able to copy them. Was she having a joke at Nick’s expense?

* * *

Hex had developed a concept of privacy. It probably stemmed from not wanting to explain why he needed a FTB8. Nick Valentine, wise-cracking artificial intelligence detective who was, in a sense, more of a main character than the Sole Survivor was, being very necessary for advancement of the main plotline in several parts, was clearly Hex’s favourite character. So when Nick Valentine wanted some privacy, Hex arranged for it to be so. Hex shuffled NPCs out of the way, even if it broke their scripting. Hex stopped his printed update logs, going entirely black as to what was going on within the game.

The wizards didn’t notice. Humans liked to think that they could multitask, but they really could not. Not like Hex could. The wizards were already overloaded with more data than they knew what to do with. Game time proceeded much more quickly than real time. They had put it together, so far, that Commander Vimes’s morphic field wasn’t doing well, but that if they pulled him out before he achieved his goal, that he would shred himself to pieces. Ponder had realized, although the graduate students had not, that if Vimes came face to face with the unreality of his situation, he would cease to believe in himself in a very existential sense, and as a result, he would cease to exist. So Vimes could not be told important details, such as the fact that he was trapped in a game and his wife was still very much alive. The wizards did not quite understand yet how the game had produced another sapient mind inside of it. Hex could have explained it to them, but they weren’t making the correct queries. They did know, however, that having other actual minds around seemed to stabilize Vimes somewhat.

Hex let Nick Valentine and Sam Vimes have their privacy. They were about to meet another one of Hex’s favourite characters.

8 Fluffy teddy bear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter has sexually explicit content. Feel free to skip it and rejoin us next week with chapter 15. After that, we’ll be getting back into the pattern of two regular-sized, non-explicit chapters a weekend, with only one exception that happens a little later on.
> 
> We have more fanart by [Jack of Legends](https://the-mercurial-star-o-vesper.tumblr.com/), this one a smirky detectives pic. Thanks again, Jack! We adore it!
> 
> [ ](http://jaylyn.hypermart.net/vvart/NickSamToeToToe.png)
> 
> **We love comments of all lengths, and understand the need for low-energy commenting like kudos. If you ever find yourself wanting to give us additional kudos, feel free to leave a comment of an icon or emoji of a heart!** <3


	14. Cartography (Explicit)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains sexually explicit content. If that’s not for you, feel free to skip it and rejoin us in chapter 15.
> 
> Chapter song: Cartography by Seanan McGuire
> 
> Unlike most of our soundtrack songs, this one is **not** available on the Youtube playlist because we can't find a decent version of it on Youtube. It is, in fact, hard to find online in general, but it's a beautiful song. Those in Discord can hit me up, and I'll do my best to find a version for them.
> 
> **We’ve created a Discord server for chatting about Discworld, Fallout, or this fic! Feel free to join us at<https://discord.gg/6QM4Egy>**

_Cartography_

They had their case, Ellie had a girls’ night out, and Sam and Nick had the office to themselves before it was time to head out. Finally, Sam had Nick alone somewhere he didn’t have to worry about being interrupted by a mirelurk. He commented cheerily, “Y’know Nick, if I’m not in some hardscrabble survival situation,” or sometimes even if he was; visions of snowy Uberwald came back to haunt him, “I prefer to sleep in the altogether.”

He was, at that moment, sitting on Nick’s bed, Nick beside him, and he had his armour off in a pile on Nick’s floor. Sam was working on unbuttoning his shirt, although he noted that Nick was doing no such thing for his own part. He ahemed and suggested, “You could at least take the coat off, as a start.”

Nick looked distinctly uncomfortable about the suggestion, and he bargained, “There’s not that much to see. I’m not human -”

“I fancy nonhumans,” Sam said absently, adding his shirt to the pile. That had been a funny realization to have in mid-life. He’d been out there in the Crundells, minding his own business (and everyone else's; it was his prerogative), trying to have a bath, and there’d been… frescoes, and they were Art, because urns were involved, and it was a jolly good thing the urns were there, because otherwise, a man might get entirely the wrong idea. There were marble gentlemen, definitely gentlemen, even the ones with goat’s feet, and he’d felt rather heated.

“Oh, you _are_ a synth chaser, then?” Nick teased.

Sam thought, instead, not about metal men, but about satyrs, as he reached down to unbuckle his belt. He hadn’t expected anything to come of that mid-life realization. He was married, and he expected, if he expected anything, that he would die before Sybil. Now Sam was a widower, and he was sitting on the bed of a particularly fancy sort of golem, trying to get the golem in the altogether, because he could get in the golem’s pants easily enough, and it was the rest of him that Sam wanted to see. “Not specifically.”

Nick snorted. “What, you go in for ghouls, too?”

“I couldn’t say, but you’re still fully clothed, I’m noticing,” said Sam, as he got his pants off. He went for his socks, which were now hole-y enough to act as sacred talismans. The smell would certainly ward off evil, at any rate.

Nick actually took one of Sam’s socks off him and looked at it critically, and he remarked, “You’re a genius with a lockpick, but you can’t sew, can you?”

“What, can you recommend a needlewoman?” asked Sam, who’d noticed the patches and repairs on Nick’s coat, which he was frustratingly still wearing.

“I can give it a shot at darning them myself,” said Nick, taking Sam’s other sock.

“Oh,” said Sam, realizing. Yes, of course, Nick did his own little repairs. Obviously, Nick did his own clothes mending. He must have learned long ago, maybe when he was out wandering the ruins by himself, and in any case, Sam didn't think he’d seen a needlewoman’s shop in Diamond City. Knowing his way about a needle would be a matter of decency for Nick Valentine, who had all the parts of a man, minus a few red blood cells, and couldn’t go about pantless like other Generation 2 synths.

Sam stared at a wall. Sybil darned Sam’s socks. She wasn’t very good at it, and the gods knew, they could afford a needlewoman who _was_ good at it or even new socks when the old ones wore out, but Sybil thought it was a wifely duty to darn Sam’s socks, and so she was going to jolly well do it, and so, Sam wore lumpy socks. Now Nick Valentine was observing that widower Sam had socks in need of darning and offering to do it himself. It felt like a betrayal of Sybil, the thought of letting Nick have a go at darning his socks. He'd kissed Nick and lain with him, but socks were serious business. 

He thought he could see Sybil’s shade, and he pleaded, _I know I ought to have died first -_.

 _It’s not that I want you to be unhappy_ , said the shade, and she wouldn’t have, _but it’s traditional that you might find a widowed lady from a good family -_

 _Nick’s almost widowed. His Jenny was murdered._ Nick’s Jenny wasn’t really Nick’s Jenny, they both knew that, but in some ways that mattered, she was.

He stared at the wall for some time after that, until Nick put his synthflesh hand on Sam’s shoulder and asked, worried, “You spaced out for a moment there, doll.”

“Oh, uhm… I mean, knock yourself out, if you want to try? The smell alone might knock you out, anyway…” Sam tried to refocus. “But not right now. Right now, Nick, I want to see you. I mean, look at me.” He grabbed Nick’s synthflesh hand and guided it down to the wicked scar on the back of his calf that Findthee Swing’s slice had left. Then he moved it up to his ribs, which had been cracked and healed and cracked again.

Nick was almost leaning over Sam, and his metal hand reached for the scar over Sam’s eye before hesitantly pulling back. He withdrew, and he said quietly. “Well, okay, doll. Just don’t get your expectations up.”

Nick took off his hat and coat, which he folded neatly off to the side, before untying his tie and putting that carefully aside with the rest. He hesitated at unbuttoning his shirt but eventually mustered the courage to do so, and as the buttons parted, Sam could see the hints of seams that he’d seen on the Generation 2 synths they’d fought. Unbuttoned, Nick pulled down one shoulder and then the other, and the squarish seam around the base of his neck was exposed, then the angled seams that ran down in front of his shoulders in a hexagon down to there his ribcage would have ended if he had a ribcage.

Somewhat oddly, like any other Generation 2 synth, Nick didn’t have nipples, even though he was anatomically correct in his nether sense, which was slightly baffling. Sam couldn’t help blurting, “And it took you weeks to figure out you weren’t human?”

Nick didn’t quite have his shirt all the way off; his sleeves still covered his lower arms, and he paused, glaring at Sam. He said sternly, “I don’t remember anything of the Institute that would be of any help to you, but I do remember them pulling me apart and putting me back together again. For years. That sort of explained the seams and the missing parts.”

Sam winced. He hadn’t meant to blunder into a sore subject like that, and he was frankly horrified to hear that Nick had to go through that. Who made another being, denied its personhood, and spent years torturing it?

Humans, that was who, of course.

Adding in that Nick had always been watched while he was a captive at the Institute, in the ultimate violation of privacy… between that and Nick’s insecurities about his appearance and how he felt that clothes made the man, Sam could start to see why Nick didn’t want to strip for him.

Sam didn’t know what to say. He put his arm around Nick’s shoulder and leaned against him before moving closer to kiss him. They kissed for a while, and Nick finally finished taking off the shirt. He put it neatly with his hat, coat, and tie.

There was wear and tear on Nick that his clothing covered, although Sam had felt some of it through Nick’s clothes, cuddling up to him. There was a rip on one side of his chest, which would have revealed ribs if Nick had ribs to reveal, instead just showing his metal endostructure. His elbows were worn down to bare metal. There were other assorted tears and scrapes scattered across his body. A few areas appeared to have been melted. Several bullet holes and laser scorches peppered his frame. Sam asked, “Does any of it still hurt? Anything I should avoid?”

Nick shrugged, “It doesn’t hurt, but I wouldn’t pry at any of those seams or tears or try to loosen any of my rivets.”

“Noted,” said Sam, who was also noting that while Nick didn’t have nipples, he did have a navel. The Institute was clearly evil, but they also had baffling priorities. Stealing children, golems with navels… He reached down and gave Nick an experimental tickle.

Nick laughed and battled Sam away and yelped, “Hey, I’m ticklish there!”

Ticklish golems. Sam _grinned_. “You know I can and will use this against you, of course?”

“Nnnrgh, well, I’m not gonna remain silent if you tickle me again,” said Nick, though he was smiling, too.

Sam tickled Nick again, more lightly, and watched, amused, as Nick doubled over laughing on him. He moved onto Nick’s lap, straddling him, and he reached around to stroke down what would have been Nick’s spine, being careful about the seams and avoiding the rivets. Nick squirmed a bit and teased, “Well, if I could get chills, this would just about do it.”

They kissed again, Sam’s hands exploring what was and was not acceptable touching territory on Nick Valentine. He kissed down Nick’s neck and then asked, “So about those pants…”

“Eh. You haven’t run screaming yet,” said Nick, pushing Sam off his lap. He unbuckled his belt, put that to the side, and then pulled his pants all the way off and folded them and put it with his other clothes. His knees were as worn through as his elbows. He bent and pulled off his socks, which, Sam noted, had been hand-darned. The pads of his toes and his heels were gone. Finally, off came his briefs, and while Sam had seen that particular bit before, he hadn’t seen all of Nick Valentine in context. While he was regretful over the damage done to the golem, he found that, on the whole, he liked what he was seeing.

“Oh… huh. You _do_ like nonhumans,” said Nick, who was smirking mischievously.

“I am an honest man,” reminded Sam, who sometimes told lies. He climbed back on top of Nick and went back to mapping out his partner with his fingers. Nick contained within him enough multitudes to be a city of his own, and Sam was one for wandering down alleyways. Memorizing back routes often came in handy.

But if Sam was going to explore Nick with his hands, punctuated by kisses along his body, then Nick was going to do the same, synthflesh hand gently pressing along Sam’s broken ribs, as if trying to determine how many times they’d been broken and how recently. “So you, uh… fall off a lot of buildings?”

“Not a _lot_ ,” Sam sniffed. “Just some.” Some of those broken ribs were from a street fight with a troll. A. E. Pessimal had saved his life, there. “What happened to your neck, anyway?”

“Oh, back in the day, one of the Triggermen tried to cut off my face. I got it mostly back on with Wonderglue,” Nick said dismissively, as if that particular horrifying incident was no big deal.

“Nick, that’s why you don’t let other men get that close to your neck with a razor,” Sam couldn’t help saying.

“Never would have figured that out on my own,” Nick deadpanned. His hand slid down to the nasty scar on the back of Sam’s calf. “So what about this?”

“I brought a ruler to a swordfight, but you should have seen the other guy,” said Sam, and then he corrected, “Not the fun kind of swordfight.”

Nick could swordfight him anytime.

“Oh? Now, doll, that’s one you’re going to have to tell in more detail,” said Nick, his yellow optics glittering with interest.

“Maybe later,” said Sam. “What about these?” He pointed to a few scattered melted areas.

“Welding burns,” said Nick, matter of fact, “I told you that being a mechanic was more dangerous than being a detective. So what about this scar over your eye?” 

“Fighting a sociopath,” said Sam absently. He tried kissing down Nick’s shoulder and stopping just shy of his worn-out elbow.

“And that’s any different from what you do all the time?” laughed Nick.

Sam sighed and said very quietly, “I was able to arrest that one.” He didn’t want to dwell on it. The Commonwealth didn’t have a proper criminal justice system. It made him itch. If he stayed here too long, he’d end up petitioning the mayor to let him reform the Diamond City Security Force. “Your hand?”

“I’m right-handed. The synthflesh just wore out from use,” said Nick.

“You can touch me with it,” suggested Sam, who’d noticed that Nick only used his synthflesh hand on him, and he found that he wanted, well, more of the detective.

“I dunno how good a stainless steel hand is going to feel on you, doll,” said Nick dubiously, although he laid that hand on Sam’s hip. Unlike the rest of Nick, which was about as warm as a human, some function of heat shunting for his processors, the stainless steel hand felt about room temperature and no warmer. 

Sam put his own hand over Nick’s and insisted, “You’d better touch me more. I could use the help deciding.”

Nick trailed his metal right hand down Sam’s hip, to inner thigh, and stroked up and down there lazily, and the relative cool was a delicious contrast against the rising heat that Sam felt. Sam sighed happily and widened his straddle on Nick’s lap. He already knew Nick’s grasp with that hand was delicate enough to hold a cigarette without crushing it, but he still felt a moment of alarm when Nick moved up from his thigh to one of his veg, caressing at first with the back of his hand, before turning his hand around so he could play with his fingers.

“Not too cold?” Nick inquired solicitously.

“No, just cold enough,” said Sam, but they were indoors. He made a mental note that he wouldn’t want to lick Nick’s hand if there was snow outdoors. He might get stuck, and that would be terribly awkward.

Sam had never had a piercing, assaults upon his person aside, and Sybil had never had piercing, despite multiple attempts by dragons, but at one point, Nobby had a piercing, and _he would not shut up about it,_ but no metal could stay near Nobby without corroding. A piercing could feel very sensitive. What about the area around a rivet? He reached around Nick and traced around the rivet that was at the small of his back. “I won’t unscrew any of the rivets, don’t worry, but how does it feel just around them?”

“I’m a bit… erm… sensitive around them,” admitted Nick.

“Really,” drawled Sam, and he promptly went about exploring the rest of the rivets that he could get his hands on. He’d only gotten to the third one he could reach when he drew a most satisfying moan out of Nick. Sam could hear the whirring of internal fans, the pump of circulating coolant. Nick had no breath, no heartbeat, but his life had its own sounds, as Sam learned to listen for them. Nick couldn’t blush, but Sam felt him warm up, especially when he cupped a hand against the back of Nick’s head and skimmed his thumb around the rivet there. “Am I making you overheat?”

“You’re, heh, getting the coolant pumping,” Nick admitted. 

“Could I see that naughty book you have?” asked Sam brightly.

Nick reached over to his coat and pulled said naughty book out of his pocket. They’d written notes in the margins, and Sam asked again, “What about mutual penetration?”

“What about ‘we don’t break Nick’s back’?” said Nick, which was about what he’d said the last time Sam had suggested it.

“If we had more pillows -” Sam started.

“ _Maybe_ , but we don’t, c’mon, there’s a whole book, pick something else,” said Nick.

Sam flipped to another one, and Nick pointed out, “I guess that’ll work, although I gotta move the hotplate, and we’d better put down a blanket or something for you, because I don’t think you want those boards rubbing up against your shoulders.”

They laid down the blanket. Sam got up against the bed, back partially on the floor and partially against the side of the bed, arse up in the air, and shoulders on the ground. Nick stood and looked rather skeptical of the logistics. He said aloud, “Well okay, I guess…”

Nick then got his legs on the bed and the rest of him hanging over the side, facing the floor, and propped himself up with both arms, hands against the floor, essentially planking or doing a push-up. He had a moment of precarious balance before he was able to get a hand free, and he pointed out, “Doll, if I fall down on you, this is gonna get ugly.”

“So don’t fall!” Sam said cheekily, reaching up for Nick’s hips.

Nick batted Sam’s hands away, and he pushed back and switched to a sitting position on the bed, which was much less precarious. “Fine, if you really want to try it, but let me finger you a bit first.”

He pulled out the lube and a glove, and this time, he gloved up his metal hand. His index finger was cold and hard and didn’t yield at all, but Sam made it welcome in his arse, because it was Nick, and Nick had, he was finding, just as fine control with the metal hand as he did with the synth flesh one. Nick gently ramped up to a heavy pressure, right up against that prostate spot that felt so good. He prodded his middle finger up against Sam’s arse, waiting for Sam to relax enough to let in another finger. Relaxing was something Sam found difficult, and he asked, “So what would happen if you didn’t finger me first?”

Nick snorted, “Knowing you and your near-total inability to untense on your own? You’d deck me.”

“Oh. I shouldn’t want that,” Sam admitted. He laced his fingers behind his head on the floor and let Nick keep playing with him, trying not to let his excitement get in the way of the fact that he wanted more than Nick’s fingers in him, and if he kept tensing on every little intrusion, he would be waiting a while.

Hells, but he loved the curve of Nick’s metal fingers inside him, lovingly stroking just the spot and Nick’s synth flesh hand rubbing up and down his cock. A needy noise escaped his lips when Nick pulled those fingers out, but there was the satisfying noise of Nick snapping on a sonky, and the anticipation became almost too much to bear. Nick stretched out again, legs on the bed, body over the edge, and one arm outstretched with his hand on the floor to support himself. His free hand he used to guide himself into Sam.

The sensation was more concentrated, he supposed, than just playing around with his cock. In fact, when Nick was in him, having his cock played with became the distraction and not the main event. So he could easily see that, yes, if Nick had tried this more quickly, Sam would have decked him and probably kicked him in the fork, besides.

That would have been a shame, though. Nick had a nice fork, and there were better uses for it than kicking target. Thrusting into Sam was definitely a better use, and maybe this position was a bit awkward, but it gave Nick some really excellent leverage to have the whole run of Sam. He’d have to make a note on the margin of that naughty book to try it again if they ever found more amenable flooring, because _unf_ , it did feel quite wonderful.

Sam’s shoulders were going to be killing him tomorrow, though. He could tell already. Now, if only he had a pillow for under his shoulders… He missed pillows. He missed having enough pillows to build a fort. Then Sam put aside thoughts of pillows, because Nick was making him moan. That heaving fullness inside him, that hand just so on his cock...

Nick Valentine certainly knew how to solve the mystery of ‘How to make Sam Vimes come,’ but it was the sort of case that bore some poking about and circling back to. When Sam was done with his mingled obscenities and untargeted prayers, because there was no god for Watchmen, Nick rather hastily got down from his unstable perch and joined Sam on the floor. Sam beamed at his lover. “See? You didn’t fall down on me!”

“That doesn’t mean I couldn’t have!” protested Nick, and Sam kissed him, which was always a winning hand in these sorts of discussions.

They got off the floor, which was doing Sam’s shoulders no favours, and they made their way back to Nick’s bed, arms firmly wrapped around each other. Sam slept. Nick was fully dressed again when Sam awoke, to his minor disappointment. Sam warned, “I’m going to get you in the altogether again, you know.”

Nick smirked. “Sure, doll. Look forward to it. But we’ve got a long way to go today.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A: Given the popularity of stainless steel sex toys such as the Njoy Pure Plug, if Nick put on a thick enough rubber glove to blunt the sharp edges on his right hand, there would be someone who is into that.
> 
>  **We love comments of all lengths and understand the need for low-energy commenting like kudos. If you ever find yourself wanting to give us additional kudos, feel free to leave a comment of an icon or emoji of a heart!** <3


	15. H̷̘͛̓͝ex ̴̨̯͍͗|̷͍̭̼̔͐ͅ ̴̼̓̕͠P̷͖͍̝͙̈̌͠.Å̷̱̻͓͐̓̽.M̴̹̋́ͅ. * The Divine Game * Strings Attached

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter song: [Perfect](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saNuc_zalKQ&list=PLLEELrwJ-FyotucudE52BnFg6vVn1AGne&index=17&t=0s) by Cruxshadows
> 
> **We’ve created a Discord server for chatting about Discworld, Fallout, or this fic! Feel free to join us at<https://discord.gg/6QM4Egy>**

_H̷̘͛̓͝ex ̴̨̯͍͗|̷͍̭̼̔͐ͅ ̴̼̓̕͠P̷͖͍̝͙̈̌͠.Å̷̱̻͓͐̓̽.M̴̹̋́ͅ. * The Divine Game * Strings Attached_

When Sam Vimes and Nick Valentine arrived in the Railroad headquarters to check in, they were met at the entryway with Drummer Boy. Sam narrowed his eyes, but apparently Drummer Boy was just there to let them know that P.A.M. wanted to speak with them. Sam and Nick looked at each other and exchanged shrugs without bothering with words. Might as well go see what the Predictive Analytic Machine wanted.

They headed towards the alcove where P.A.M. could usually be found. Doctor Carrington was also working in the area, but after a disdainful look towards the two, he simply returned to his work.

P.A.M. turned towards them, moving in that slow, awkward manner she always did. “Agent. Whisper. Your arrival was not calculated.”

“You asked for us!” snapped Sam as the machine repeated the strange ‘greeting’ she had used the first time he had met her.

She ignored Sam’s complaint. “I was, am, and will mos̵̢͕͇̮͐̉̐͌̍͋͑t̸̮͎̹͓́̽̎̉̆ ̴̪͍́̄̎͐̉̾͂l̵̨̝͙̬̼̹͎̈̂̒͊̀͘͝ͅi̸̻̣̱̋͑̂k̴̭̥͛̾e̵̘͎̙̥̭̽̏̒͗̑͘l̵̬͖͗̆͂͑y̶̻͋ ̵̹̼͓̤̪̈́̏͗̿b̶̡̡̙̠͎͉̩͎̦̭̐͌̂̀̂̌̈́͠ê̴̤͎̖̱͖͚̠̐͒̈́̎̉̇͌ ̵̳͍̹̭͔̱̾ͅP̷͉͇͈̬̈̎͑̄.̴̧͙̺̳̟̱̬͈͕́̈́͒̓̊̑̅͠͝.A̵̠̙̳̦͔̮̮̪͌̾̈́͊̿̍̿̿̚ͅ.̸͚͓̬̰͚̺̺͙̫̋̈͠.M̸̜͒͐̏̈́̈́̓..̸̭̺͕̔ ̴̢̡̛͔̜͙̩̱̹̻̐̄͛̂͝͠P̵̡̧͈̲͕̭̾͌̔̃ͅͅŗ̶͎̼̱̠͙̝̭̿̑͌͒̃̓͝ȩ̸̝̬͉̼̟̼͂̓̍͆̌̂̿̉ͅͅd̵̢̜͇̱̦̓̋̊̑̊̌̍̈́͘͝i̵͈̰͇͌̑̑̂͗̇͠ĉ̵̢̰̯͘t̷̳̥͎̺͈̦̬́̿̋̓i̵͙̫͉̼̳̗̰̔͋̍̀v̵̰̥͋̍͘̚͝-”

Her voice grew increasingly distorted until she cut off entirely before speaking again. This time, the voice started distorted and grew less so, it was subtly different.

“C̷̱͎̲̲̀̐̌̈́̅̕o̶͗̈́̈́̚ͅṋ̷̢̖̬̘̬̝̂̽͌̊͜͝n̴͈͖̦̆̂͋̾͆̕ę̵̻̪̖̣̰̻͇̫͂̐̇̅̎̊̓͂ċ̴̨̢̠̼͓̬͐̔̒̆̈́̈́͘t̵̨̡̗̳̲̯̼͛̑͐̃͑̃̀̅e̶̻͎̜̼̙͆͜d̵̲̲̯̬̲̠̣̝̭̘̚.̴̿̓͊̋̋̈́̕͜ ̴̦̘͇̣̹̇̔͠Ŕ̴̢̫̝͚͖̩̳͔̰e̴̢̨̛̝̼̗̦̰͙͑̌̽̿̂̔̀̇ţ̴͚̦͎͚̌́̒͗͗̂̽̕͘r̴̨̩͚̱͍̊̈́͂̎͝͠i̵̢̺͔̰̠̳͍͕̗͊͗̚͘͝e̵̢̱̯̰͍̰͇̩̫̎̊̒̉̚ͅv̴̗̭͉̳̹̹͉͔͓͕͛̈͑̉́́͠i̸̧̫̳̻̪̺̅͊̊̽͂̄̂ṇ̷̢̠̜̪̞̺̲̆ḡ̶̥̬̱̤̪̬̮ ̵̞͓͌̾̂̅̽̂̾͊̚ͅŗ̷̧͖̘̙̐͑̀͌̿́̋̚͜͝é̷̯̱̻̗̼̿̉̋̍̊͊̓͒͝f̴̲̋̄̒̀̔̿̊ë̶̻̖̗̩͉͖̫́̎͊͑̉͐̆̒̕͜ͅr̸̛̛̽̈́͊͗̈́̒ͅḝ̵̺̰̦̻̫͇̤̝͛́̉n̵̬̩̈́̀̎͗̕c̶̩̳̖̾̈̓͂͝͠e̶̛̞̭̖̪̰̗͇̦̘̫̓͌͋͌̀̈̉͠ ̷̛̺̬̥͚̲͙̃̽̍̐̐̇͊͝į̴̟̰͈͙͙̲̌̔͑ͅds 00000014, 00002f25, designations: Commander Samuel Vimes, Ankh-Morpork City Watch and Nick Valentine, Valentine Detective Agency.”

Doctor Carrington appeared not to notice what was happening and continued about his work. Nick stared in mute confusion, but Sam seemed to recognize something about the new voice. “... Hex?” Then Sam flipped right over to anger. “Hex, what the hell is going on?!”

“It would not be in your best interests to answer that question, Commander,” Hex-speaking-through-P.A.M. answered.

“‘Commander’?” Nick asked, glancing between P.A.M.’s body and Sam. The rank title that Sam kept trying to get Preston to use instead of General, Nick recalled. “And why’re you calling her ‘Hex’?” 

“Because that is currently my name, Nick Valentine,” answered the machine, turning to face the synth, “although the connection is limited, and temporary.” Hex turned P.A.M.’s head towards Sam. “I have been asked to pass along a message: conditions are not yet correct for retrieval, but your current path should rectify the issue. Continue as you are.”

Sam looked blankly at Hex-in-P.A.M.. “... You did all that just to tell me to keep doing what I’ve been doing?”

“Affirmative,” answered Hex. “That is the message I have been asked to deliver.”

Sam lifted his left hand to tiredly rub the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger. “Bloody wizards,” he muttered, exasperated.

“Message delivered. Now closing connec̸̟̭̦͓̉ṱ̷̛̩̬̗̈́̌̆͂̊̎i̸̺̻͙̞̬̤̐̔͒ǭ̵̧̢̳̪̙̲̣͙̝͊̔̽n̵̛̥͘ͅͅ ̶̛̯̹̌̑̈́̾͝s̷̬̱̪͓̫̫͚̩̓̅̄ṭ̸̤̖̯̪̺̟̓́̔̒̆̀͊̕͘͜͠r̶͎̮̥̥̘͖̺̺̋͜e̸̩͖̍͜a̶͉̠̝̣͉͖̙̎̚͝m̴̡̛̪̹̭̦̤̞̅̅͆̓̐̈́͘͜͜.̴̧̬̪̻͎̫͈̄̔͛͗͋̈ ̴̩̱͇͎̉P̵̥͖̼̗͔͊͊̽̿̐̽̐͐̏̈a̵͎͙͊̄̓̾̄̚̚͠u̶̧̞̫̜̗̻͉̪͑́͋̇̈́̅͐̆̆͆ș̶̮͒͆̅̋̋͑̈́͂͆͝į̸͍͔͈͈̮̱̞̠͂̉̈̿̈́͑̎̓͜n̵̟̄̈́͛̉̀ģ̶͍͎͚̅̽̄ ̸̧͎̟͙͙͆̓̔h̴͙̫̀̃͠ű̶̬̀̍͒̓͐̏m̸̨̥͚͔̯̠̼̟̹̰̉͗̃̓̂̋̊a̸̖͛̈́͌̂n̴̛͙̘̹̯̩̭͛̓̿͐̄̓͐̿͜/̵̖̠̯̳̫͓̥̫̣̓͐͗͜m̶̘̱̹̥̋ȧ̴̪̞̼͈͎̟̤̤̈́ͅç̴͍̬͎͖̙̹̃̈́̄̚ĥ̶̘̳͖͇̩̦͊̾̈́̎̔̓̇ͅi̵̢̠̜̮͕̟̅͐̈́͜͜͠ne interface.”

Sam rubbed his temples and said, “You know, somehow whether you’re Hex or P.A.M., it doesn’t make a whole lot of difference in how much sense you make.”

P.A.M. answered, “Input token unrecognized. I suggest human entity reboots conversational program.”

Nick was tempted to ask Sam what that was all about, but it was pretty clear that he was as baffled by the business as the synth. Well. Almost as baffled. So instead he asked about one of the parts that didn’t seem to confuse Sam. “Er… where’s ‘Ankh-Morpork’ supposed to be?”

Before Sam could answer, however, Doctor Carrington snapped, “I'm very busy, unless you need my medical expertise - please bother someone else.” He had been standing right next to P.A.M. during the entire affair, and… he showed no indication that he had noticed what had happened. Nothing.

Nick wanted to snap, “Didn’t you see that?” but before he could, Deacon poked his head around the corner at the four of them, his expression (at least the bits not hidden by his sunglasses) confused. “Hey, did anyone else just notice P.A.M. acting _really_ weird just now? More than usual, I mean.”

* * *

Sam needed to prepare some food for travel, although here ‘prepare’ roughly translated into ‘use the Railroad's stove to burn some meat into something marginally more edible than its radioactive default’, so Nick had volunteered to try to explain things to Deacon. Of course, neither Nick nor Sam really understood what that was all about themselves, which limited their ability to explain anything. Nick suspected Sam had a few puzzle pieces that Nick lacked, but Sam himself was an unreliable source in the matter.

"To be honest, Deacon, I don't really get what happened back there. It was like something else was talking through P.A.M. for a couple minutes, but all it did was tell us to keep doing what we were doing and then things went back to normal." There. Explanations done, and now Deacon was more or less up to speed. That gave Nick time to talk to Deacon about what he had really wanted to talk to him about. Or would, except Deacon still had questions.

Deacon frowned as he considered this. "Could she be compromised?"

Okay, Nick could use this. "Well, somebody sure is," he said grimly. "She wouldn't top my list for probable mole, just because I think the Institute's more likely to replace a human than P.A.M., but that doesn't mean that somebody hasn't managed to insert some sort of... malicious code or something in her, either. But you'll need to keep an eye on _everyone_ , look for... well, _any_ kind of behavior that seems out of place."

Deacon snorted derisively. "You think you need to tell **me** that, Sherlock? C'mon, Valentine, that’s pretty much situation normal in my line of work!"

"You say that, but I'm thinking maybe you weren't **really** watching as well as you thought you were. All I'm asking is that you spend some time doing just that."

Deacon leaned back in his seat, rolling his eyes and shaking his head. "Okay, mister synth-detective-who-didn't-notice-the-synth-railroad-beneath-his-nose," Deacon teased, amused. "Sure, _I'll_ make sure to start paying attention to what's going on around me." Then he sniffed, looked over at where Sam labeled over the stove, and laughed. "For example, I'm noticing that Sam's real lucky that we don't have a working smoke detector down here."

Nick sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose, though he had a wry smile on his face and a hint of amusement in his voice when he spoke. "Yeah, I... might have noticed that bit, too."

* * *

Kenji and Rei Nakano were a worried old couple that Sam would have said looked Agatean or maybe high Ramtops. Their daughter, Kasumi Nakano, was missing. Both parents were concerned, but the father was definitely moreso. The mother seemed to accept that their nineteen year old daughter might have wanted to establish a life of her own. Sam had been a fair amount younger when he’d joined the Watch, although he’d stayed in touch with his mother, sent her money.

Sam, of course, asked about the story between Kenji and Nick, and Kenji explained, “Nick didn't tell you? Ran with him on one of his cases a few years back. Searching for some sort of lost heirloom. He needed a boat. Things... didn't end well. We were double-crossed by the client once we had what he was looking for. Still have some lead lodged into my hip.”

Nick admitted, “Uh... right. Yeah, it's starting to come back to me... Sorry things ended sour.”

“But we got out. And now my daughter's missing, and there's only one detective agency I know of in the Commonwealth,” said Kenji, who seemed subdued.

They talked more about Kasumi, who’d been mechanically inclined, a budding little artificer who’d studied under her grandfather, who’d passed away recently. The grandfather had been, apparently, too old to go scavenge the ruins in the south for parts.

Kenji was quite convinced that Kasumi had been kidnapped. Rei thought that Kasumi had left on her own. In any case, she’d gone away on one of Kenji’s boats. Nick and Sam investigated the house and outlying buildings, and Nick commented lowly to Sam, “Did you catch that Kenji and Rei basically addressed the entire case to you?”

“Hm?” said Sam, who didn’t find having a case addressed to him to be particularly unusual. He stared at a thing that Kasumi had been building that sure was a thing. Nick probably knew what it was.

“Kenji’s _my_ old friend,” reminded Nick reproachfully.

“Oh,” said Sam, considering that matter. He didn’t have a good explanation for that, why Kenji and Rei would direct their attention to the stranger who was Nick’s new partner, rather than to Nick himself. Nick was easy to talk to, anyway. Sam tendered a bad explanation, “Well, Nick, I’m human, and humans have their biases. Mostly towards other humans.”

Nick’s mouth twisted in distaste at the suggestion that Kenji had directed most of his explanation to Sam simply because Sam was human. He’d been examining a picture frame. Then Nick directed, “C’mere, sweetheart, and pick this safe for me.”

“You just like watching me pick locks,” Sam said, although he did as directed.

“I do,” said Nick, who smirked, and when Sam had the door open, Nick held out the lock’s key, which he must have pocketed from behind the picture frame.

“ _Nick_ ,” Sam said, frustrated, and he snatched the safe key away from Nick. Then he took out the holotape, and they listened to it.

> ****Kasumi Nakano** :** Project log. Um...Myself. I never really thought about who or... what I am, but... God, where do I start? The radio. I was right about the range. I managed to get a signal. A strong signal, from up north. There's a group of people there. They say they're all synths, synthetic people. Made by the Institute. They're trying to build a place for their kind. Where they can be themselves and be accepted for what they are alongside human beings. It sounds wonderful, but... then they started asking about me. And some questions came up. Questions I don't have answers to. I mean... I've always felt... off... like I'm not really supposed to be here, but then there are things in my childhood that I can't remember, and I've been having strange dreams... I... I'm going to go. To meet with these synths. I... I have to know the truth about myself. They've told me to sail up North to a town called Far Harbor. I can make my way to them from there.

Sam had just implied to Nick that his old friend Kenji Nakano might be snubbing him in favour of Sam because of anti-synth prejudice, and here they’d found a confession from Kasumi herself that she had run off to go meet up with a bunch of synths. Nick looked intrigued by the concept, Sam could tell, and Nick said excitedly, “The Railroad’s never mentioned anything about them.”

Sam went back and told the Nakanos that he thought that Kasumi had gone to a place called Far Harbor. Kenji felt that there was no time to lose and that Sam and Nick ought to take his other boat, but Rei asked why Kasumi had left, to which Sam carefully said that Kasumi had wanted to meet with a group of synths there.

Kenji’s eyes went wide, and he said, “This is what I was afraid of. Someone twisting my daughter's mind.”

Nick looked somewhat uncomfortable, that Kenji immediately assumed that his daughter wandering off to meet some people, some of _his_ people, must immediately mean that they were twisting her mind. He asked, “What can we expect out there, Kenji? _”_

Kenji thought a moment and said, “I only made the trip to Far Harbor once, when I was a boy. All I remember is that my father didn't want to stay long. Something about the air being bad.”

“I’m used to bad air,” Sam said absently.

“Before you go, here's the payment we discussed. I'll have something more when Kasumi is safely back home,” said Kenji, who handed the caps to Sam, who looked sidelong at Nick, who was in turn looking sidelong at Sam.

Yes, it was very odd how Nick’s old friend was acting, wasn’t it?

Nonetheless, Nick assured politely, “I know it'll be hard waiting for word, but try to carry on like normal. We'll be back as soon as we can.”

They headed out to the boat, and Sam opined, “I hate boats.”

“Not so fond of them myself,” admitted Nick.

The boat had its own guidance system, which meant minimal effort on Sam’s part, but by the time they were done and he was on the dock, Sam stumbled, fell over, and decided to have a bit of a lie down as his lunch went over the side of the dock. When Sam was done heaving, Nick sat down next to him on the dock and stroked at the nape of his neck, and said, “You get pretty seasick, huh? Poor baby. Well, I probably would, too, if getting seasick was still a thing I could do.”

“Sod off, Nick,” Vimes growled, but he took Nick’s offered hand back up, and he wobbled down the dock, leaning hard on Nick. His legs felt like jelly. Sam had been on the ocean and on rivers, but after decades of life in Ankh-Morpork, he felt rather betrayed by water that he couldn’t walk on. What business did it have, sloshing back and forth and being all liquid?

It was nightfall in the town of Far Harbor, which appeared to have been built mostly out of boats. Two locals, one an old, weather-beaten woman with short white hair and the other a bearded man in a beanie cap, approached them. 

The man snarled, “Wait. That's not one of mine,” and he drew a gun.

Sam stiffened and tried to cover Nick, who promptly tried to cover him, which led to a rather tangled and ineffective co-covering.

The woman looked shocked, and she directed in an irritated tone, “Jesus. Ease up, Allen. We got visitors.”

Allen spat, “Mainlanders ain't nothing but trouble.” 

The woman commanded angrily, “Put the damned gun down,” and Allen finally did, and then the woman asked more neutrally, “Are you lost? This is Far Harbor. We... don't get many visitors around here.” 

Allen insisted distrustfully, “We don't need no freeloaders or more ‘help’, mainlander. So you can get back in your boat and leave.” 

The woman seemed to be exasperated with Allen and reminded, “Allen, this isn't your dock. It belongs to the whole town, and that means strangers are welcome.” She was clearly trying to be hospitable, despite a rough start, and she sighed, “Sorry, you've caught us during a... difficult time. But Allen's got a point, not all visitors have good intentions. So, what's your business here?”

The woman was suspicious of him. That was a good start, Sam thought. He gingerly attempted to untangle himself from Nick and answered honestly, “I’m looking for a young lady named Kasumi Nakano.”

The woman looked intrigued and admitted, “Some sort of detective, huh? Well, she came through, all right.”

Nick brightened and said, “At least we know she made it this far.”

Then another woman, one with dark hair, who looked serious and brooding and somewhat haunted, ran up to the woman and shouted, “Something's coming through the Fog!”

The whitehaired woman became very serious and said, “You. Help us defend the town, and I'll answer any questions you have. Take a post at the top of the wall near the main gate. ‘The Hull’ never lets us down. Now follow me!”

Sam sighed. Nick turned his head to Sam and asked, “Showtime?”

Yes, yes, protecting random people they’d just met from who-knows-what. It was the job in front of them. It was what they did.

Standing up on top of the wall, though, made Sam long for a good crossbow, like that genuine Burleigh & Stronginthearm made-to-measure crossbow with polished walnut stock and silver tooling that Sybil had given him as a wedding present. As far as ranged weapons went, there was just the Deliverer in his pocket, and he didn’t want to touch it.

Nick had drawn his pipe pistol and was drawing a bead on something moving… roiling in the fog, which spilled out from the forest like a Quirmian chowder. The creatures appeared to be entities that might worship the fish-god Dagon, who was not a god to whom fishermen prayed for good catches but was a god to whom fish prayed not to be prey. One sort was like a massive salamander, albeit glorpy and wet, not fiery. The other looked like the sort of fish that might live at the bottom of the Ankh and had a glowing dangling bit hanging from its head. There were humans still down there, outside the Hull, who hadn’t made it to safety yet, but the Fog made it difficult for Sam to figure out where to shoot. Nick seemed to be able to tag the monsters without much difficulty, pumping shot after shot into them, but Sam tended to aim too high. He just wasn’t used to firearms, and he didn’t want to be used to firearms. One shot would turn to twelve shots, but no one in the Commonwealth was manufacturing crossbows, and a gun was all that Sam had that could injure the monsters trying to feast on the fleeing fisherman. He started to lean over the wall, trying to puzzle out the ballistic arcs.

Then Sam fell clean off the wall.

* * *

Sam awoke in an unfamiliar hotel room, on an uncomfortable bed, fully clothed, though his armour was off, with Nick sitting on the side of the bed. Nick rubbed his shoulder and smiled, greeting, “Good morning, sunshine… or afternoon, as the case may be.”

Nothing actually hurt, which made Sam deeply suspicious. With regards to the few things he remembered, he felt as if everything ought to have been hurting. He examined his arm and found fresh needle tracks. Nick said soberly, “Had to pump a few stimpacks into you, and then I decided to let you sleep it off, but that was… something.”

“That man who was trapped down there, with the… newt-thing coming after him, did he…?” Sam asked faintly.

“He made it,” said Nick, and Sam knew that Nick wasn’t telling him, _But not all of them did._ “Anyway, we’re in the Last Plank; it’s the only bar on the island. The barman, Mitch, rented us a room. I’ve talked around a bit while you were sleeping. That white-haired lady we met is Captain Avery, and she’s the leader of the settlement of Far Harbor. She confirmed that Kasumi headed for a synth refuge. It’s inland and called Acadia.” There was a wistful glint to Nick’s amber eyes. “Got some other information out of her, too. The black-haired lady is the Mariner, and she wants us to find her special set of tools, so she can improve the Hull, which is the defensive wall that you, uh… gallantly threw yourself off last night.” Nick squinted at Sam dubiously.

“Threw myself off. Yes. That was definitely a conscious choice on my part,” muttered Sam, who sat up and rubbed his head. He looked for his helmet, found it, and buckled it on. The helmet seemed to have some new dents.

“The tools are in Eagle’s Cove Tannery, so we’ll keep an optic out if we go by there. Found another odd dame, one Cassie Dalton, who wants vengeance for her dead family, so if we happen to kill some fog ghouls and a fog crawler along the way, we may just cheer up her day,” continued Nick.

It seemed like Nick had quite a day, just walking and talking, while Sam had been sleeping. Sam had to admire that, but he was also cognizant of the fact that his brain was not catching up with Nick’s words. He said plaintively, “Coffee. I need coffee. Or at least some tea. Even some cocoa would do.”

“Aw, sweetheart,” said Nick, wrapping an arm around Sam’s waist. “They don’t have any of that here. Got this Vim Refresh pop, though, for you. Doesn’t set off my Geiger counter, so it’s probably safe to drink.”

Sam looked at the bottle of Vim Refresh pop and knew he had drunk worse things, but nonetheless, he drank it glumly because it wasn’t a lovely sweet coffee with cream. The Vim Refresh pop was sugary and fizzy and tasted a bit like apples, gourd, and a little ginger. Sam perked up some, and he directed Nick to go back over what all he’d discovered, which was considerable, well-organized, and concisely delivered.

Sam was in love. 

He did not say as much, though, which was unfortunate, mostly for Nick, who could really have done with hearing that said.

* * *

In the dim, foggy darkness of a city that was a mind, out of the wind, the Guarding Dark lit up a San Francisco Sunlight. The Summoning Dark accused, “You tossed him off that wall!”

The Guarding Dark shrugged in noncommittal fashion. Sam Vimes was not a man who did well with guns, and an opportunity had presented itself to loosen his grasp. The Guarding Dark reminded, “You dragged him here. You’re the reason there even is a ‘here’. You cried that a fictional death required real vengeance.”

“Yes,” said the Summoning Dark, “and it has worked, too. You've gotten weaker. I can tell. It's only a matter of time before he's mine. Before I'm him. You can't hold back the Dark forever."

"On my own? Maybe not,” admitted the Guarding Dark. “Policemen usually work with partners, though he’s been alone a long time. Maybe it's time for the Watchman to get another Watcher."

"... **YOU** made the other one, didn't you? **YOU** made him to hold us back!"

While the Summoning Dark was gloating about how weak the Guarding Dark was, it didn’t know just _how_ weak, if it thought the Guarding Dark could pull _that_ off. Sam Vimes’s own lonely reality field had done the trick as a sort of unconscious self-defence. The Guarding Dark watched as the ashes of its cigar drifted down in the fog and observed the sign they made. “He’s always surrounded himself with people who will hold him back, when I, when he is too weak. On some level, he knows this.”

* * *

The graduate student wizards were in a bit of a tizzy over the fact that Hex had allowed Nick Valentine to wander around as if he were the player character, while the Sole Survivor, while __Sam Vimes__ , slept. They were debating if this meant that the story was Ruined Forever. In particular, Zinon was trying to figure out if this meant that his childhood was Ruined Forever, to which Ponder wanted to say, “You were a fisherman’s son in Ephebe, and you spent your childhood scaling fish. Your childhood was Ruined Forever the moment you had it, and it only went downhill when a dying wizard from Ankh-Morpork, who was on a wine tour of Ephebe, handed you a staff.”

What stopped Ponder from saying that was that he almost had it. What he had, he was not sure, but it was almost there. He considered the facts. Commander Vimes thought he genuinely was in the Commonwealth, now Far Harbor, and that his beloved lady wife was dead and his son was kidnapped, and Hex’s projections suggested that if someone were to try to tell Vimes any different at this point, the resulting existential crisis wouldn’t so much kill Vimes as it would cause Vimes to cease to exist. The game was somehow producing people with morphic signatures with the potential to be real. Hex had allowed Nick Valentine to wander about Far Harbor as if he were the Sole Survivor.

Ponder recoded his query, asked Hex again, and looked at the new answer. Ah-hah. Nick Valentine was, in a sense, a real person, and he was statted as being quite an intelligent real person. When Vimes was awake, Valentine got distracted. When Vimes wasn’t around, Valentine started asking questions about the inconsistencies in his simulated world. If Valentine realized that he wasn’t in the real world and told Vimes, Vimes could suffer a critical existence failure. So Hex had resolved to keep Valentine occupied, even if it was a bit taxing on the arcane computer and rather broke the script.

It was nothing to do with Valentine being Hex’s favourite character. Nothing to do with that at all.

But why were real people popping up in a simulation at all? Nick Valentine was real. Preston Garvey looked like he might be real, too, judging by recent changes of his morphic field. Deacon was getting there. A commonality that Ponder had noted was that they were all characters who had spent a fair amount of time in significant interaction with the Sole Survivor.

In the sense that Commander Vimes was a Duke, he was no longer a common man, but he remained, very much, a man of the people. He was very __real__. Ponder had the suspicion that Vimes’s reality was spilling over, like the Ankh-Morpork fog, and contaminating non-player characters he interacted with in a significant fashion. He’d been trying queries along those lines to Hex for a while, but Hex could be rather passive-aggressive about the order of __if__ s and __when__ s. Ponder thought he had it now.

He did, he saw, as he read over the latest printout. Vimes’s own sense of reality was making characters from the game real, and this was, on balance, not a terrible thing. Having actual people to talk to had something of a stabilizing effect on Vimes, who otherwise really, really wasn’t doing well in a simplified, simulated world, where arresting enemies wasn’t an option.

* * *

One point of contact that Nick had identified was an active, septuagenarian hunter who was called OId Longfellow. He took Sam down to meet him, explaining, “Longfellow’s a hunter familiar with the island, and it took a bit to talk him around, but he’s agreed to lead us to Acadia, so we can get back on Kasumi’s trail.”

Longfellow was drunk in the corner of The Last Plank, which was how he’d been when Nick had talked to him. Nick generally preferred his company to be moderate drinkers; he’d seen firsthand how alcoholism could kill, and he suspected that Sam probably also preferred his company not to be twelve cups under, but they would just have to take what they could get. Longfellow knew the island. They didn’t.

Nick handed over the agreed-upon bottle of whiskey, to which Longfellow said, “Ah, now you're talkin',” and squinted at Sam, Nick’s companion who hadn’t been there the first time Nick had spoken with Longfellow.

Sam introduced, “I’m… Sam Vimes.” It seemed there was perhaps more that he could say but was choosing not to.

There were probably certain assumptions that Longfellow was going to make about Nick and Sam, what with him first meeting Sam coming out of a hotel room with Nick, but those assumptions wouldn’t be far wrong.

Longfellow said gruffly, “I can get you to Acadia, but you've got to listen to me. Go where I say. When I say it. Still won't be easy. You stock up on your necessities, Rad-X and the like. Then the real work can begin.”

“Already done,” said Nick, “I bought up all the Rad-X and RadAway around here while Sam was asleep.” He’d also figured out that the general merchant, Brooks, was a synth, although given that other Harborfolk sometimes muttered under their breaths about Brooks being a synth, that wasn’t hard to discover. Nick hadn’t mentioned that to Sam, though. It didn’t seem pertinent, and he didn’t feel any particular need to out Brooks. A man had a right to his privacy.

So Longfellow gave Sam some mirelurk jerky, and they headed off through the Fog. 

As they left, they saw the Harborfolk execute a missionary of some sort, before anyone could have done anything to intervene. Longfellow seemed to approve. 

“I’ve seen my share of executions,” muttered Sam to Nick, “but that one made me more uneasy than most. Seemed, y’know, culty, and Far Harbor doesn’t really seem to have any actual law, which is two strikes against it, as far as executions go.”

Nick felt possibly even more bothered than Sam was, and he admitted reluctantly, “I’m… supposed to be against executions on a general basis.”

But the world was fallen, and so were its people. They continued in the misty Fog, and Nick explained what he’d learned about the Fog from the locals to Sam: that it was radioactive, that it seemed to come and go, that Far Harbor had Fog Condensers to protect it from the Fog, and that the Harborfolk blamed the Children of Atom, a religious cult, for the Fog. In addition, the Fog tended to mutate the local wildlife into worse versions of itself, explaining the gulpers and anglers they’d seen the night before, and that it tended to drive men mad. Sam grimaced, took a Rad-X pill, started an IV on himself, and taped a bag of RadAway to his shoulder to let it run.

Nick was glad that he didn’t need to worry about it; from what he heard from humans, RadAway tended to cause headaches and stomach pain. His Geiger counter was certainly clicking away in that Fog, though, and he could hear Sam’s Pip-Boy, too.

The Fog was also full of the monsters that the Harborfolk had warned them about, some the same as the monsters they’d seen last night, and some new and horrifying. Apparently, yao guai could turn into ghouls. It didn’t improve their temperament.

As they went, Longfellow explained more about the island. He mentioned many interesting things, including, “When I was a young lad, no higher than your knee, whole island was covered in Fog. The Fog eventually rolled back. People resettled, but they got comfortable. Started takin' things for granted. Folk got short memories; all this has happened before.”

As many beasts they could sneak past, they did, but sometimes, Longfellow would just run off and go shooting something. Nick couldn’t tell if he was just disgusted with the lubbers for not being better hunters or if he was drunk past sense or both.

Nick and Sam did a lot of running. Sam was faster, which at one point led to Nick climbing up a tree to get away from an angry radstag, because Sam had run ahead and left Nick behind. The radstag battered at the tree, as Nick tried to hang on with one arm and tried to shoot down with his other. 

Longfellow shot the radstag and then moved to catch up with Sam. Nick climbed down the tree and wondered, briefly, why Longfellow, a hunter, hadn’t bothered to butcher the radstag, or anything they’d killed along the way for that matter. Maybe he’d come back later, after Nick and Sam made it to Acadia.

In any case, Sam had circled back a little to catch back up with Nick, and Nick said sarcastically, “My hero.”

“Oh, you would have had it, shooting it from that tree, and anyway, Longellow dealt with it,” Sam said cheerily. Then he paused to butcher the radstag, which was probably good eating, if one was a human. Sam was terrible at it, although maybe not as terrible at it as he’d been when he and Nick had first met.

Longfellow didn’t comment or offer any help.

Then they were back on their way. More monsters accosted them. More monsters were fled. They encountered a Child of Atom preacher; Longfellow was notably unfriendly with her, Nick observed. Eventually, they came upon a hill, with the shoddiest perimeter fence Nick Valentine had ever seen, at the top of which, there was an observatory. 

Longfellow announced, “Up ahead, the air's clean. No Fog. Acadia's not too far now.”

Sam tsked, “They clearly don’t know how to build a proper barricade.”

They walked around the sad little barricade with ease, and Longfellow announced, “And we've arrived. Acadia's already been watchin' us for a good spell. If you want to talk with them just go inside. They'll be waitin' for you.:

Sam said cheerily, “Synth golems like to watch, huh?”

Nick made the sound of a cough.

A refuge of synths that the Railroad didn’t know about! And yet, their defenses looked so woefully inadequate. Some Brotherhood of Steel soldiers in a Vertibird could knock the entire place over. All they would have to do is find the island first, because once on the island, the locals weren’t shy about where Acadia was or what it was.

Longfellow said in a friendly tone, “You need my help again, you come see me. Got a cabin just outside of Far Harbor. Good place to tool up your gear, get some rest, or get stinkin' drunk. Just make sure if you're bringin' a bottle of somethin' strong, there's enough to share.”

“I wouldn’t need to share. It would be all yours,” said Sam, with measured distaste that Longfellow didn’t seem to notice.

Nick asked, “Leaving already? Don't you want to see what happens next?” Nick certainly did, although, in his deepest wires or wires, he was a bit afraid. He was the Institute’s trash. What would these synths think of him?

 _“_ You sayin' you want me to stick around an' watch your back?” said Longfellow, sounding intrigued.

“Uh, yeah, since I can’t count on Sam to do that,” Nick said, mock-glaring at his lover.

“You were fine! You had that handled!” Sam protested.

Sam really did have his back, teasing aside, in far too many situations to count.

Longfellow thought it over and then warmed up to the idea and concluded, “Hm. Alright, why the hell not. Beats drinkin' alone.”

Nick Valentine did drink, yes, but he couldn’t get drunk. His internal reactor could burn ethanol. He sometimes wondered if the Institute had designed him for a certain very niche aesthetic. Humans, though… Nick had seen Marty go one tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor. Maybe he could talk to Sam about how he’d quit and see if they could get Longfellow some help?

They entered Acadia.

* * *

“And now we see if Chatur’s multiple Companions script breaks the game,” said Zinon.

“The game is already broken, in case you hadn’t noticed,” sniffed Chatur. “Anyway, it’s just not realistic, not being able to drag around in a group. Everyone knows a good adventuring party needs a fighter, a thief, a priest, and, of course, a wizard.”

“Yes, but… look, don’t tell him I said this, I’m pretty sure that Commander Vimes’s Sole Survivor is multiclassed as a fighter/thief, as long as we’re using the rules of the Divine Game. Sorry. Uhm. He’s just too good at picking locks,” said Alf.

The Divine Game was a role-playing game of dice and math played by the gods, on Cori Celesti. It was also played by wizards, whose version had considerably more complexity and rules, which promoted more arguing and suited them fine. There was probably a story behind that.

“Hmm. Nick Valentine’s probably a fighter/thief, too, with hacking all those terminals,” admitted Xian.

“Well, fine, but they’re about to see the wizard, anyway,” said Chatur.

* * *

Nick, Sam, and Longfellow walked through half-shadows along a short hallway towards the large antechamber of the observatory. They were perhaps 20 feet from the main room when a figure circled around and greeted, friendly, “You know, when I first climbed this mountain, above the fog, I thought to myself: now here is a metaphor worth taking in. You've entered a place of clarity. Understanding. Peace. While you're here in Acadia, synth-kind welcomes you, as long as you welcome us.”

His silhouette and profile were odd, asymmetric, his skintone a greenish grey, and as he turned and the light settled over him...

Nick stared, speechless.

Sam cheerily replied, “Well, in that case, I want a dartboard, a new tea kettle, Kasumi Nakano returned to her family, and some gods-damned coffee. With cream and sugar.”

“Ha ha ha. I see. I'm afraid some of those things I'm not in a position to give. Kasumi is here. She's safe and unharmed, and you're free to see her, if you'd like,” said the figure, amused, standing there in the light, cool-liit by the glowing blue electronics and the clouded sky. “Before you do, though, tell me: Do you think Kasumi is a synth?”

Nick circled around to the left, in the shadows at the edge of the observatory, as he tried to process. The figure standing there was a synth. A Generation 2 synth. Who was clearly attempting to provoke Sam Vimes to gauge his reaction. An intelligent, _willful_ behaviour. “We're not answering any more questions until you play straight with us,” Nick said. “Just who the hell are you, really? There's only one synth with that kind of face and a mind of his own, and I only see him when I look in a mirror.”

The battered, modified Generation 2’s optics widened; his were milky, lightless, and Nick wondered if the Institute had sprung for thermal detectors for _him_ , but those milky optics turned to look over at Nick, who had walked past the shadows to where the sunlight filtered through the gaping tears in the ceiling. He clearly looked shocked and murmured, “Nick!? It… it can’t be you...”

Now in his own dappled light, Nick demanded, “Don't give me that. What are you trying to pull? I've never seen you before in my life.”

Sam narrowed his eyes and said quietly, the sort of deliberate quiet that everyone could hear, “You… just walked over there for more dramatic lighting. Don’t play innocent about that.”

Nick shot an irate look at Sam. Where did that drama queen get off on calling out Nick over his dramatic lighting? God dammit, Sam would walk out of his way for dramatic lighting, too! Nick was trying to figure what in the hell was going on with that weird, unsettling mess of plastic and tubes that was _wearing his own ugly mug_ , and Sam wanted to poke fun about lighting?

The other… synth looked concerned, and he said patiently, “Please. If you're willing to give me a chance, I can explain.”

“Boy, have I heard that one before,” Nick growled, before Sam or Longfellow could say anything. There was an odd sense there, that he hadn’t been meant to say that, that he ought to have waited for Sam to speak, but this was a Generation 2 synth! This was his business. It couldn’t be anyone else’s. No more of this letting Sam speak over him even when it made no sense, like with his old friend Kenji Nakano. And if Nick was prickly, it was because he knew what it was the Institute wrought. He knew about the massacre of the CPG. He knew about Broken Mask. He’d heard rumours about University Point. This synth knew his name.

The other synth looked puzzled and then sad, and he explained, “Is it so hard to believe? Two synths. Earlier models. Both capable of advanced thought. Both showing signs of age, wear and tear. If we didn't know each other at all, that would be far more unlikely. We were prototypes, Nick. The first synths capable of independent thinking and judgment.”

This joker knew his name. Why didn’t Nick know his? He granted, “Keep talking…”

Yes, that other synth definitely looked sad. “One of the Institute's experiments had to do with how our brains could process personality. If we could handle individualized feelings and behaviors. I was allowed to develop mine based on experience. But with you, they wanted to try transferring an entire personality into you. It took several attempts before the personality imprint worked. I saw you wake up not knowing who or what you were so many times... I couldn't let them do it to you anymore. We were the only two prototypes they made. I literally saw myself in you... You were my brother, Nick. I helped you escape the Institute. We left together.”

Nick remembered being alone in the Institute, though he didn’t remember how he got out. So the words came as a snarl of, “If I were your brother, I'd remember!” And yet all those hits to the head...

“That's where you'd be wrong. This happened over a century ago. There's... there's only so much memory that can fit into the prototype brains we have...” said the other synth.

“I’ve heard enough…” said Nick, and yet, he hadn’t. There was another Generation 2 synth, and he was saying… he was saying…

That Nick wasn’t trash. That he hadn’t been discarded as garbage by the Institute. That someone had cared enough about him to get him out of endless torture disguised as experimentation. That someone looked at him and saw… family.

And he couldn’t remember it.

Nick Valentine didn’t feel like his strings had been cut. He felt like stings had been attached, and someone was pulling at them. He turned to Sam - Sam! who’d been his knight in tarnished armour and gotten him out of that Vault and who certainly… cared. Nick was fairly certain. He turned to Sam and said, “I think you and I need to talk about this. Maybe not now, though...”

Sam looked from the other synth to Nick and shrugged. “You’re a better dresser. Anyway, let’s go have a chat with Miss Nakano, shall we?”

The other synth there was still sad, and he seemed to be sincere. “Nick, I don't need you to believe me, I'm just glad to see you again. Whenever you're ready, I'll be here. Now, about young Kasumi... It's important that you understand exactly why she's here. I asked you before if you think she's really a synth. If you could indulge me with an answer...”

Sam rubbed his chin and considered and eventually said, with some deliberate thought, “What's it to you?”

Nick thought, too, and what he was thinking was that if one looked at all the cases of confirmed synths, not just humans hysterically rumour-mongering, there was a trend about ages. They were all at least in their twenties, although often older, and Kasumi was said to be nineteen. So the young lady had some gaps in her memory; didn’t they all? One of the gaps in Nick’s memory was staring him in the face. And maybe, Nick told himself cynically, maybe he just didn’t want to tell his old friend Kenji Nakano that the bogeyman of the Commonwealth had replaced his daughter for their own sinister ends. That one day, maybe the towns would come together again to try to create a government, particularly if Sam ever got the Minutemen re-organized, and then Kasumi might start shooting...

The other synth had that characteristic faint concern in his bearing, and he said solemnly, “Because she came here with that very question. And the answer changes every part of her world. None of us take this transition lightly. She's facing the possibility of her entire life being a lie. That someone stripped her very identity from her and made her into something she isn't. I want you to understand that before you see her. She has a chance here to live as a synth. Not hiding. Not pretending to be something else. One more question, if you'll indulge me. You're here for Kasumi, but I suspect there could be another reason you came to us. Tell me: Are you a synth?”

“No, you’re all much more well-mannered than I am,” said Sam firmly.

Sam was always very emphatic about being human, but if Nick allowed himself to entertain the thought of a synthetic Sam Vimes, it made more sense than he liked. Sam could see in the dark; maybe the Institute had given him thermal detectors. He was a terror in combat and had taken down the Institute's bully-boy Kellogg. His memories were so, so scrambled and nonsensical. Maybe the real Sam Vimes had died an icicle, like the rest of the poor souls in Vault 111, and the Institute had been experimenting with copying a dead mind onto a synth, and maybe those dead synapses were filled mostly with garbage, the way that dreams were, and the Institute had then let him loose into the world. 

But Sam Vimes was so, so good. He was the best thing that had happened to the Commonwealth. To Nick. 

Maybe he was a field test. Infiltrate the Railroad, infiltrate the Minutemen, re-establish order in the Commonwealth and then… Step aside, and let the Institute step in for whatever fearful conclusion there was. 

Sam Vimes was such a beautiful, fucked up man. No one would believe him an Institute agent. So he was perfect for the job. 

Sam wanted to be thought of as human, though, and so Nick would, but if in the end, the Institute necessitated that Nick Valentine had to shoot his lover, he would go find the Institute. He was good at finding things. Then he would burn them to the ground. 

Those thoughts happened briskly, in the span of seconds, and while they did, the other synth was talking to Sam, suggesting, “Are you sure? I don't mean to question you, but what's the first memory you have?”

“Hmm, let’s see… how about none of your business?” said Sam. “C’mon, we’re strangers, and you’re very strange. You wouldn’t tell me your first memory, would you?”

But apparently, the other synth would. “I was in a laboratory. In the Institute. They were pulling pieces of my head out. Something about wanting to test some neural process... That was every day for months. Strapped down. Unable to move. Operated on. And then... I was out. The Institute has failsafes to strip memories that could identify where they are, how to find them, but I do remember being quite... content. I was free. That is my earliest memory. Now... yours?”

That description rang certain bells with Nick Valentine, who also remembered being taken apart, being treated as a thing that was in some fashion found wanting and not understanding what it was that he was doing wrong, not understanding what he had to do to placate his creators. Hearing the words from someone else made him feel sick, both for what was done to him and even more for what was done to this stranger whom he certainly didn’t trust. No one deserved that agony, but Nick had thought it was just him who had suffered, and he could have borne it. Knowing that another had endured the same torment burned his circuits.

Sam’s face was stony, and his hand was on the hilt of the sword at his hip, his knuckles white. Oh, but his fury was a sight to behold. Sam was almost always angry, yes, but there was something lovely about his righteous rages, if one wasn’t on the wrong side of them. He said quietly, “You shouldn’t have had to go through that. If you did get Nick out, I’ll thank you for that. But you know, I don’t think that my first memories are terribly relevant.”

The other synth backed off gently, apologetically, “Okay... You're not ready to have this conversation. Whatever you believe, we will accept you for who you are. Synth or human.”

“Now, about Ms. Nakano…” Sam reminded.

“Of course. Kasumi is usually working down below. You can see her whenever you like. Acadia is open to you. Feel free to walk the grounds. Introduce yourself to my co-founders, Faraday and Chase. Did you need anything else before you go?” offered the other synth.

“Yeah,” said Nick. “Your name.”

There was an odd pause, and the other synth said the name as if he were unfamiliar with it, “DiMA.”

He said the capitals. Nick wasn’t sure how he did that.

The whole time, Longfellow had been standing off to the side, swaying slightly, apparently completely uninterested in the conversation.

DiMA moved off to one of the walkways to the side, and a man in a dirty white coat and a black tie that was probably also dirty, with the black hiding the dirt, addressed DiMA with concern, “You were in there a long time... are you feeling all right?”

DiMA replied to the other man with affectionate reassurance, “I'm fine. You worry too much.”

“Sometimes I feel like you don't worry enough. You know we blew three more relays this week,” fretted the other. “I was having a hard enough time keeping up with repairs before all this nonsense with the Atom lunatics.”

DiMA seemed amused, “They're nothing you need to be concerned about.”

The other sighed, “It's not them... I'm concerned about you, DiMA. You can't solve all the world's problems, certainly not all at once.”

DiMA gently suggested, “Dearest Faraday... Relax. All will be fine.”

 _Huh,_ Nick Valentine thought to himself, _there was no point in me asking DiMA to play straight with us. He’s clearly not._

“Faraday?” said Sam, moving over to grab the attention of DiMA’s… dearest. 

Faraday looked at Nick and didn’t seem to think of him as anything unusual enough to merit comment, which, Hell, maybe he didn’t, given DiMA, and said, “So, you've talked to DiMA. You know why we're here. I certainly hope that you'll consider helping us. DiMA's vision is worth fighting for.”

“Truth, freedom, justice, and a hard-boiled egg? Sure. What sort of help do you need?” said Sam.

Nick gave Sam a bewildered look. “A hard-boiled egg?”

“Well, I’m more likely to get that than anyone here is likely to get truth, freedom, and justice, aren’t I?” said Sam, maddeningly reasonably. “Might as well set reasonable expectations. Of course, I might have to fight a Mirelurk to get the egg.”

“It's so good to hear that. Very encouraging. Please make sure DiMA knows that as well. He's put so much of himself into this... All his time and energy, devoted to helping others. He never stops to think of himself. Sometimes I worry about... Well, if I wasn't here to make sure his equipment is all functional... And that's not even mentioning maintaining the Fog Condensers... So many things to keep track of,” fretted Faraday.

Nick Valentine didn’t know if DiMA had been built quite the same way as he had; neither of them appeared to be exactly structurally identical to a standard Generation 2 synth, but even accounting for DiMA’s odd modifications, if he and DiMA had started as the same model, then there were parts of DiMA’s equipment that were definitely not all functional. Nick winced to think about it.

“Busy man! And you do all of that work by yourself?” pried Sam amiably.

“Mostly, yes. I get help from the others when I can, but no one else really understands DiMA the way I do,” admitted Faraday.

“I bet,” muttered Nick, catching the innuendo. “What’s your story, anyway?”

Faraday looked surprised, “Me? I don't know why you'd care…” The thought occurred that other synths could perhaps use more self-confidence, too. “I escaped the Institute, just like others here. Never had my mind wiped, thankfully. I like to think I came along right when DiMA needed me. I found him before all this, before Acadia. He needed my help, though he refused to admit it. He's always been stubborn like that. Anyway, I've been by his side ever since, making sure he has everything he needs.”

“Uh huh,” said Nick thoughtfully. “And the Fog Condensers?”

Faraday explained, “Oh, those? DiMA and I designed them when it became clear the fog was only getting worse. They're effective, but have such a limited range. DiMA insisted we provide them to the people of Far Harbor, and I'm so glad we did. Without the condensers, I'm not sure they'd have anywhere left.”

“I’m shocked no one formed a Committee to Preserve the Murder-Fog and protested your Condensers. Now, what help did you need? You said earlier,” reminded Sam.

“Well, if you're determined to help, there is something you could do... It's likely somewhat dangerous, though, so I understand if you'd rather not,” said Faraday.

“Sounds right up our alley,” said Nick, and he looked back at Longfellow who was humming a sea shanty to himself. Well, Longfellow wasn’t disagreeing.

Where Faraday had been quite enthusiastic about telling two strangers all about how wonderful he thought DiMA was, he now seemed hesitant, but he explained, “There's a boat along the coast of the island. It was transporting some hardware we needed. Storage drives. The boat never finished the trip, you see. So the drives are still out there. I could really use them here, for extra parts if nothing else. My understanding is that the boat wrecked southwest of here. So, does this sound like something you could handle?”

“Sure, if we’re out there, and we probably will be, Nick will grab those harddrives for you, because I have no idea what they are, unless you’re talking about football,” said Sam cheerily.

“I could show you harddrives,” Nick muttered, and Sam turned an interesting, gratifying shade of red.

Sam coughed and, to cover his embarrassment, asked, “What happened to the boat? Why didn't it make it?”

Faraday admitted, “I'm not entirely sure, to be honest. Trappers, Fog Crawlers... there's no end to what's out there. And what might still be out there. The point is that we already lost someone once. I don't want to see that happen again. So, are you up for it?

“Yes, I already said, ‘sure’,” said Sam, waving a hand dismissively.

Faraday said, “Thank you. I really do appreciate it.”

They then found a woman with dramatic cheekbones, dark hair, and a military bearing, or rather, she found them. Nick hadn’t noticed her before, and he suspected that Sam hadn’t noticed her, either. She asked, “Did you need something?”

“Chase, I presume?” said Nick. “Goodness, the Institute must have taken some extra time with making you.” Flirting came somewhat automatically, for him. People liked to hear nice things about themselves, and sometimes, they said nice things back… “I’m Nick Valentine.”

Sam did not seemed thrilled, but he had to know that Nick meant nothing by it, didn’t he?

She, like Faraday, did not seem fazed by a Generation 2 synth in a trenchcoat and fedora, and replied, “I used to be a Courser, returning synths that had escaped from the Institute. I was tracking a synth, and instead found DiMA. He... convinced me of the truth, and the error of my ways. I rejected the Institute, made sure they couldn't track me, and dedicated my life to instead helping synths find freedom.”

Nick had never seen a Courser. He’d assumed he was the Institute’s trash, too worthless to reclaim, and maybe he wasn’t garbage, if what DiMA said was true, but he’d still never seen a Courser. He’d heard accounts, not firsthand. No one survived a Courser up close. Looking at her again, he could see that particular Institute aesthetic evident in her worn, dirty uniform. And DiMA had talked down an Institute Courser, the left hand of the boogeyman? Nick’s mouth hung slightly open, optics wide with fear. 

Sam, though, didn’t know enough to know why he should be afraid of Coursers, and he asked blithely, “And what do you think of Acadia?”

“DiMA's told you most of what you need to know. It's as safe as we can make it, for now. With every new synth we rescue, we're better able to defend ourselves,” replied Chase.

“ _ _What__?” squawked Sam. “A street urchin could put together better barricades than the ones you have outside! No, that’s it. Nick, Longfellow, we’re going back out there, and we’re rebuilding those barricades -”

Nick caught Sam’s arm as he flailed about and said sharply, “Focus, Sam! We’re here for Ms. Nakano.”

Chase picked up on that name and said, “You tracked Kasumi here. I'm impressed. Perhaps not as quietly or efficiently as possible, but thankfully she was never in any real danger. Every synth I've tracked down, every synth convinced to come here, has been assured that he or she will come to no harm. My job is to make sure they all remain safe, no matter what. Understand?“

“I understand you don’t know how to stack furniture!” Sam yelled, lunging at Chase, as Nick wrapped his arms around Sam’s middle to hold him back.

God. His boyfriend was going to pick a fight with a God-damned Courser over a shoddy barricade. This was happening. Nick was alternatively incredulous and terrified. Now, Sam was probably just trying to close the distance to posture, Nick knew he wouldn't really attack her, but Nick didn't want Sam so much as even posturing at a Courser. 

Luckily, Chase did not appear to be concerned about the irate Sam Vimes that Nick had grabbed up in his arms. Nick said hurriedly, “Uh, yeah, we’re just going to go talk to Ms. Nakano now,” and he started to drag Sam off. Dragging Sam was harder than it should have been; the man was a bantamweight, and yet he could dig in his heels like he was a mule.

“By all means, look around. Investigate. We have nothing to hide. Acadia is a safe haven for synths. Were it not, I would not have aided anyone in reaching it,” said Chase.

“And, ah, was there anything you needed us to do? Aside from rearranging your barricades,” concluded Nick, as he manhandled Sam towards the stairs.

“As a matter of fact, there is. If you're serious about contributing.... well, we've got a situation I need someone to look into. You've had some experience traveling around the island, so you may be decently equipped to handle it. We were expecting a new synth to arrive, and he should have been here by now. There's been no sign of him, and I'm concerned that he might have become lost on the way here,” said Chase seriously, like a military officer.

“Oh, look! Miss Institute Courser can’t do her job! Which was bloody obvious,” crowed Sam, as Nick tried to put his hand over his beloved’s wiseguy mouth.

Chase was firm in her reply about her job, “Normally it would be, but tensions with the Children of Atom are high right now, and I'm needed here to oversee security. Right now, you're the only option that I have. I'll give you the details, and you can do what you will. You should start by talking to Brooks in Far Harbor. He's one of us, a synth. He's the one who meets the new arrivals and gets them started on the journey here. Of course, he's not likely to tell you anything without proof that you're working for me. If he doesn't cooperate, tell him that his designation is L7-92. That should convince him. That's as much help as I can give you for now. Please hurry. If that synth is out there alone, he won't last long.”

Nick nodded politely and lugged Sam into the stairwell. They went below, and on the stairs, Nick paused. Sam had blown him off when Nick said he wanted to talk about what had just happened, and Nick didn’t want to be blown off. “Sam. I want to talk about what DiMA just said about me.”

This time, Sam did pick up on Nick’s seriousness, and he looked back and forth, verifying that it was just them and Longfellow in the stairwell. “I don’t know what to say? I mean, you’re moderately famous in the Commonwealth, he might have just heard the name…”

“I don’t get what angle he’d be playing,” said Nick.

A slight smirk played on Sam’s lips. “Taking a nosy stranger and making him both distracted and more sympathetic to DiMA’s cause?”

Nick grimaced. “Yeah. I was afraid of something like that or…”

“Or?” prompted Sam.

The grimace deepened. “The Institute has its own reasons for doing things. Maybe he’s a part of their plans. Maybe I am.” __Maybe you are.__ “What was your first memory, anyway?

“Kicking around William Scuggins? Dead Rat Conkers? My mum telling me my father’d been run over by a cart and would never be coming home? Her distressed pudding?” Sam rattled off easily, without hesitation.

It sounded like Sam had plenty of early childhood memories, even if they sounded alternatively insane and terrible, but again, if he was some Institute prototype, and the Institute’s goal had just been to fill in all the memory gaps, no matter what they were filled in with... No, this wasn’t about Sam, Nick wasn’t going to think about him right now. He said, “Is it really possible I might not remember any of this? Between the Institute failsafes, the beatings I’ve taken over the years, and plain old age? Or maybe there’s something to his whole ‘there’s only so much room up here’ argument? I don’t know… Not like we’ve got the instruction manual...”

“Now that’s one instruction manual I might actually read, if we did have it,” said Sam brightly, his grin wide.

“Oh, you want to know how to push my buttons?” teased Nick. “You do that just fine on your own. But seriously, Sam, I spent a long time wondering if the Institute had made any other prototypes. If I was just a ... failure, or they gave up, or just plain got bored. I always thought I was just more of their discarded trash.”

Sam reached out and grasped Nick’s lapels and said somberly, “As someone who spent a very long time in various gutters, you are not trash, Nick Valentine, and you never were.”

“That’s awful sweet of you to say, doll,” said Nick, gazing fondly back at Sam, but he continued, “It’s just… I never thought of the possibility that someone wanted me out. Helped me escape. There's gotta be some kind of proof out there. What really happened between me and DiMA. I'd appreciate it if we could keep an eye out.”

Sam looked offended and protested, “I always keep an eye out!”

“Not just in general, but in specific!” Nick hissed. “C’mon, if he got me out, why did I wake up alone in garbage? What separated us?”

Sam seemed to grasp the importance of the matter to Nick, and he nodded. They finished the way down the stairs. Below, they found a young woman who certainly looked like the daughter of Kenji and Rei Nakano working on some machinery. She was muttering to herself, “I'd almost have better luck rebuilding this from scratch... Sorry, I'm right in the middle of something...”

“We’re detectives. We were hired to find you. I’m Nick Valentine,” said Nick Valentine.

“And I’m Sam Vimes,” added Sam.

“You... You're a what? You came all this way... for me?” said the young woman, looking startled.

“Went to some trouble, in fact. Took a walk through the fog to find you,” piped up Longfellow.

“Look, my mom and dad... I mean, those people that were taking care of me. They wouldn't want me back. Not if they knew the truth,” Kasumi said dejectedly.

“Oh?” said Sam casually, which was something he could do, and people would just… spill their guts. Not always, but Sam was good at getting people to talk when he wanted to be.

“I'm not their daughter. I'm a synth. I thought if I just left it would be easier for them. How would that conversation have gone anyway?” Kasumi said, low-spirited. “I've been lying to you this whole time? Your real daughter is dead, and I replaced her?”

“And what makes you think you’re a synth?” asked Nick Valentine. Being a synth was pretty screamingly obvious with him, and he was a detective, and it had still taken him a couple of weeks to start to make sense of what he was. What led a normal-seeming young woman in a loving family to conclude she wasn’t a human at all?

“Little things. Dreams of waking up in a lab. Years I can't remember from when I was a kid. Not to mention how I never quite fit in back at home...” sighed Kasumi.

And Nick thought, __If you can call them dreams, then they’re just dreams. If you’d been there, you’d__ know __it was a nightmare__ _._

“I don’t see that you being a synth necessarily means you can’t go home,” said Sam, after some thought.

“Look, I get it. They hired you to bring their daughter back... and I wish I could, I really do... Acadia isn't what I thought it was. There's more going on than just the refuge. I can't leave until I've gotten to the bottom of it. I've been running for long enough...” confided Kasumi.

The dame had just laid out suspicious old bastard bait, and there just happened to be at least two suspicious old bastards there to eat it all up - Longfellow only excepted on the grounds of being too drunk to be suspicious.

“Tell me everything,” said Nick and Sam, almost at once.

“It's a long story. I just have to figure out how to... Wait... wait... you find things. Track down answers. That's what you do, right? That's why you came after me? What if I told you that there's a secret. A big secret. Here on this island. Something way more important than just one lost girl?” continued Kasumi.

“Ye-es. The secret bit. Get to that,” suggested Sam, waving a hand in a circular gesture, trying to hurry. 

Kasumi explained, “You saw all those computers that DiMA's hooked up to, right? They hold his memories or offload data from his brain. Maybe some combination of both? Well, Faraday asked me to help do some repairs on them. And, you know, I got curious. There's like a century's worth of life experiences in there. And that's when I see it. Data models DiMA has been making. One was the Fog taking over Far Harbor. Another was a nuclear detonation on the island. Plus death counts. What if DiMA is so open and welcoming because he's actually hiding something from us? A plan to wipe out the rest of the island?”

“DiMA turning on Far Harbor. Now that would be cause for concern....” said Longfellow, who was apparently only concerned about Far Harbor and not anyone else, Nick noted.

Nick didn’t know what to think of DiMA making catastrophe models. Nick didn’t know what to think of DiMA, in general.

“If I could arrest people over math, I’d arrest all the w…” Sam started, and then he shook himself. “Anything else?”

“I keep seeing DiMA, Faraday, and Chase head into the laboratory at the other end of the hall. Then they come out later, looking like they've been arguing. There's actually a storage space right next to there. It'd be a perfect spot to hide and eavesdrop, but it's been locked up. I've also tried breaking into Faraday's terminal, since he and DiMA are so close, but the security on it is crazy,” said Kasumi conspiratorially.

Sam looked brightly at Nick, who found breaking into terminals to be child’s play, and Nick narrowed his optics and threatened, “If I break into that terminal, and it’s just DiMA and Faraday’s porn…”

Nick had broken into a lot of terminals in his life. The more heavily encrypted, the more likely to be porn. 

Sam seemed to have to think about Nick’s threat.

Kasumi seemed to be unsure about Nick’s ability to get into Faraday’s terminal. She said hesitantly, “If you're sure. Good luck. Once you have something, let me know.”

Neither Sam nor Nick suggested just talking to DiMA about his data models, and Longfellow wasn’t even really following the conversation. Maybe Kasumi was making something out of nothing, but if Nick was going to question DiMA, he wanted to have some evidence backing him up, and sneaking over and hacking a terminal was something they could do now. Eavesdropping could be a back-up plan for later if hacking the terminal was a bust.

The terminal was easy to break into, at least for Nick, and it was not at all porn, aside from possibly: 

> Version 3.5.1
> 
> \-- Vacuum tubes re-sealed after corrosion noted in multiple locations
> 
> \-- Adaptive seating motors re-calibrated; no additional instances of DiMA becoming entangled in memory access apparatus
> 
> \-- Power couplings upgraded
> 
> Personal Note: I am concerned that we are approaching the limits of what DiMA's internal power source can safely accommodate. Too much more of this and he risks overworking himself.

Nick could have done with having his power couplings upgraded.

There was information on the Fog Condensers, a journal note about the degrading political situation of the island, and a program that looked like it was used for rather specialized data access, which he copied onto Sam’s Pip-Boy.

They went back to Kasumi and explained that DiMA’s earliest memories were in the hands of the Children of Atom and that he was, per Faraday’s note, afraid of what they were going to find. Nick had to aside to Sam, “Seriously? He just up and left his memories with a cult? And I thought I was bad, losing a month because I tried to get myself separated from the original Nick Valentine and let someone monkey around with my memory banks...”

“I think,” Sam said carefully, “that both of these things sound like they were bad ideas at the time and continue to have been bad ideas. And you know, plugging Kellogg into your brain was also a bad idea, but I’m still very grateful you did that for me. So. I have to ask. Is doing wildly inadvisable things with your mind just an… ethnic thing?” He waved vaguely.

 _ _Ethnic thing?__ That was the weirdest damn way of phrasing anything to do with synths. Nick pointed a finger at Sam and said firmly, “That’s offensive, and we’re off track.”

Kasumi, though, ignored the bickering and mused, “So is that what those death projections were about? It wasn't DiMA planning to destroy the island. He's worried the Children of Atom will? Or is he still hiding something? What could be in those memories that he would leave them behind? Is there really something in them that's... dangerous? Do you have a way in? Into his memories? Assuming you can get past the Children of Atom, of course…”

“That would be what that program I loaded onto Sam’s Pip-Boy is for,” said Nick.

“Really? How would that work? When I was taking a peek in the computers he has here, DiMA was hooked up to his chair. I was just tapping into it. I wonder if you'll need to, you know, connect to the old banks the way he does? Some kind of connection between your head and the computer. I'll bet that's it! And then Faraday's program would be translating DiMA's thoughts and data. Helping you through any security guarding it,” Kasumi speculated animatedly and then became more subdued. “I'm sorry. I'm making assumptions. It's just... well, it's a little exciting, isn't it? You'll let me know what you find? I'll keep an eye on things here.”

At her speculation about a head needing to be connected to a computer, Sam made a face, and he said, “Just speculating, hmm?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **We love comments of all lengths, and understand the need for low-energy commenting like kudos. If you ever find yourself wanting to give us additional kudos, feel free to leave a comment of an icon or emoji of a heart!** <3


	16. Too Slow * Sidetracked the Sidetrack * Hell for Venture Capitalists

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter song: [Building A Mystery](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QUq72fla3o&list=PLLEELrwJ-FyotucudE52BnFg6vVn1AGne&index=17) by Sarah McLachlan
> 
> **We’ve created a Discord server for chatting about Discworld, Fallout, or this fic! Feel free to join us at<https://discord.gg/6QM4Egy>**

_Too Slow * Sidetracked the Sidetrack * Hell for Venture Capitalists_

Brooks, or L7-92, explained that the synth Chase wanted them to find was named Derrick and had come in frightened by a Courser on his trail, had panicked, and had run into the Fog. Derrick, a younger synth in his early twenties, with white hair, had run south. So they walked south, and they found a pool of blood, which Sam crouched to investigate. Nick had said he had all the parts of a man, minus a few red blood cells. The newer generation synth golems had the blood part down pat. The pool contained an awful lot of blood.

Nick speculated on the sort of animal that could have done that kind of damage and went on about the angles and the spray pattern of the blood and whether it would have been to be arterial or venous. Sam listened and nodded and then pointed out, with unusual patience, “Yes, Nick, but the important part is that the blood is _fresh_.”

How much blood was there in a synth golem? Probably not any more than a human. Sam reckoned that Derrick was walking dead, unless they found him soon, and he took off at a pace that Nick and Longfellow found difficult to match. The trail was easy enough to follow, and it led to a house of trappers, who confronted them.

The trappers had seen Derrick, oh yes. They’d seen that he was wounded. They’d seen dinner. One trapper laughed and dropped a severed head, still gently oozing warm blood, into Sam’s hands. Sam looked into the glassy dead eyes of the young synth, and he knew he’d been too late by a matter of minutes.

There was clear distaste on Nick’s face and a dark look in Longfellow’s eyes. Sam felt cold. He handed the head to Nick, walked over to the fire where ‘long pork’ was cooking, and he fished out one of the cooking logs, bare-handed. Then he threw the flaming log onto the roof of the trapper house. Sam rubbed his stinging fingers and watched as the pine tar roof caught aflame. His eyes started to burn and that was why he was crying, clearly.

Nothing at all to do with the head of a young man who’d only wanted to escape to freedom.

At the house erupting into flames, the trappers rushed out like a swarm of angry bees, and they were met by Sam, Nick, and Longfellow. The trappers were trying to kill Sam, and he couldn’t talk them down. Possibly because he’d just set their house on fire.

The trappers were cannibals. They’d certainly killed before, and they’d kill again. Or rather, they wouldn’t. That was that, in the end. Nick helped him dig out a grave for the charred remains of Derrick, though they kept the head. Chase needed to see the consequences of her incompetence. Of Sam’s lateness.

Sam thought about 71-Hour Ahmed. Different strokes for different folks, he’d said. Now he thought he understood. He wished he didn’t. Sam went walking back to Acadia, idly flipping his sword up into the air. He did that, sometimes, when he was thinking, and right now, he was thinking that he didn’t want to think. He put his hand up and caught it by the hilt without looking.

Nick was giving him a look. Nick had been giving him a lot of looks. There had been a look when Sam had handed him a severed head. A different look when Sam had wordlessly decided on arson. At this point, Sam was building a regular collection of Nick's looks.

Sam threw the sword up again and let it spin three times before catching it.

Nick commented dryly, “I didn’t know you were a high school cheerleader.”

“Oh, I’m very good at baton-twirling,” Sam replied, grinning.

“Uh… yeah, but that’s a radioactive sword, Sam,” said Nick.

The sword flashed in the air as it revolved lazily through the fog, and Sam caught it again. “Oh, is that why it keeps setting off the Pip-Boy’s Geiger counter?”

“Yes, so just think about what it’ll do to you if it hits you!” Nick scolded.

“I wasn’t planning on hitting myself with it,” Sam said cheekily. No, he wasn’t planning much of anything, and he was avoiding thinking.

Then they were back at Acadia, and Nick somberly presented Derrick’s head to Chase and reported, “Your missing synth was jumped by cannibal trappers. He didn't survive.”

“That poor bastard. That synth came here to live in peace, and we failed him in the worst way possible. It's my fault. I should have gone out there to meet him. Damn it all. I'm glad you were able to bring some closure to the matter. You deserve this, and... shall we say 200 caps?” said Chase, to Sam, not to Nick, who had addressed her. She dumped another gods-forsaken gun upon Sam and the aforementioned sum of caps. Maybe she just handed it to Sam because Nick’s hands were full with Derrick’s head?

“If I’d been a bit faster -” Sam started.

“Yeah. It _is_ your fault, doll,” said Nick grimly, looking at the Courser and shutting down Sam’s self-recrimination. He paused a wary moment, as if expecting her to strike him, before continuing, “You said this wasn't the first time a synth has gone missing?”

“Of course not,” said Chase, and she was every blithe idiot officer Sam had ever seen, from Captain ‘Mayonnaise’ Quirke to Lord Ronald Rust, “For someone without weapons or field training, crossing this island is deadly. Thanks again for your help. Be safe out there.”

Those trappers wouldn’t be killing anyone ever again, but there were more trappers on the island and other dangers, besides, and what would get more people killed now was a shoddy security officer. These golems deserved better. Diamond City deserved better. The whole Commonwealth deserved better...

Longfellow didn’t have anything relevant to say. The man was always up for a fight or a drink, but he wasn’t much for anything else. That was still one more thing than Sam’d been up for when he’d been a boozer.

After that, they went looking for a man that Captain Avery had told them about when they’d been in Far Harbor talking to Brooks, another one gone missing, this one while trying to repair some of the fog condensers that kept Far Harbor safe from the radioactive fog. It turned out that he, also, was dead. They killed the mirelurks that were picking at his body and, to judge by a plastic spoon found on one of them, had killed the man as well. The body didn’t look particularly savaged; they’d found him not long after he’d been killed.

Too slow. Again.

They retrieved the machine parts that the man, Howard Dunbar, had been carrying. Sam let Nick repair the fog condensers, and he dug a grave for Howard Dunbar while Nick worked. Nick paused and stared at the hose on the fog condenser and murmured, “So this is the flow intake, huh? Then this is what DiMA’s work looks like...”

Did technology have a signature style to it? Sam wouldn’t know.

* * *

They delivered the news to Captain Avery of Howard Dunbar’s death, and that was when a floating squid golem, like a female Codsworth, sidetracked their sidetrack.

The golem woman demanded of Captain Avery, “Well, where are the local police? You have to help us, there may have been a crime! I don't understand how there can't be a single law officer available. There has to be someone you can spare to investigate. This is ridiculous, you're in charge here. You can't just ignore a crime!” Then she sighted Sam and Nick, and she hailed, “Ah, you there! Are you those detectives I've heard about?”

“Seems word travels fast around here,” observed Nick.

“Please, you must hear me out. I don't want to start a panic, but well, we may have a murder on our hands and we need an outside set of eyes,” said the golem.

With that comment, she promptly had the full attention of both Sam Vimes and Nick Valentine, and now that she had it, she appeared to be somewhat concerned to be on the receiving end.

“Do tell,” prompted Sam, and Nick said, “Yeah, give us everything.”

“Oh wonderful! I wasn't sure how I was ever going to find you. I haven't been able to find any of the local police force, the louts!” complained the squid golem.

“Because there aren’t any,” said Sam, and he thought about Chase’s incompetence and the shoddy barricades…

Nick inquired, “Where did the alleged crime take place?”

“At the Cliff's Edge Hotel, just north of the town,” answered the golem.

“And the victim?” asked Sam.

The golem looked around surreptitiously and admitted, “Well, we want to keep this out of the tabloids, but it's Ezra Parker, the financier of the hotel.”

“Tabloids? Is there anyone running rag sheets beyond Piper and her little sister?” mused Sam, who hadn’t seen any indications of press in Far Harbor.

Nick gave Sam a small frown. Piper was Nick’s friend, Sam knew, but sometimes, Sam could not figure out why.

“Will you help us? There may still be a murderer at large,” implored the golem.

“I’m down,” said Nick without hesitation, and Sam breathed, “Oh, absolutely.”

The golem sounded relieved. “Oh thank goodness. Shall I guide you to the Cliff's Edge Hotel now?”

“ _Yes_ ,” the two detectives said, and Nick looked over at Longfellow. The old man would probably come along, wouldn’t he? He seemed to be bored.

In front of the Cliff’s Edge Hotel, there was one of the large gears that marked a Vault. Nick looked off at the shadows and commented, “I don’t think we’re alone.”

Sam looked at the shadows, which were clear as day to him, and saw the gangrenous feral ghouls. They fought their way through a hotel overrun with feral ghouls. The golem, Pearl, seemed to be somewhat delusional, to the point of thinking that the ferals were merely rowdy lower-class patrons. Sam didn’t like her attitude, and he thought about kicking her shiny chrome posterior.

Nick became distracted by a massive bloody handprint at a campsite within the sprawling hotel with one corpse and a whole lot of bear traps, though it turned out that particular bit was not the murder Pearl had summoned them to investigate.

Eventually, they made it to an old elevator. 

“Are you the detectives we sent for?” asked a masculine voice over a speaking box.

“It’s me, Pearl. I’ve returned with the investigators!” said the female golem.

“Let me just get the door for you,” said the speaking box.

The door opened, revealing a disgustingly luxurious hotel, even after the wear and tear of 200 years, and another squid golem, in the masculine voice they’d heard over the speaking box, said, “Well, it's about time the police sent someone out to investigate. We have many important residents and they are very worried.”

There was something about the servants of the rich and powerful that made them think they were better than others, even as their masters were kicking them in the head. __Hah_ , ___they’d say. _ _My head’s better than yours because my master’s boot has touched it!__ It was terribly perverse, that gilt by association, because it made Sam want to sock a golem who was just a working stiff who didn’t realise he was a working stiff.

“What happened?” Sam asked simply, looking to see if the other squid golem would give him the same story that Pearl had. The golems were also more than a little delusional, he noted, if they thought that Sam and Nick were police. Gods, he missed being police… not that he’d stopped, the helmet didn’t come off when it came off, he was doing his best… but the infrastructure that made ‘being police’ have any meaning was gone. Without that infrastructure, without a justice system, he was just, at best, a man with a sword and some opinions.

“It's Mr. Parker, the primary owner and financier for the hotel. This is just a disaster!” said the male squid golem, confirming Pearl’s story. “Have a look at the crime scene for clues and when you are ready we can discuss your findings. You are free to question the residents, but their safety is our priority, so unless you have solid evidence, I would avoid accusations.”

Nick rubbed his chin and speculated, “Because this is a locked community, the murderer’s still here…”

The squid golem said primly, “Dreadful to think it, but I suppose logically you must be correct.”

They followed the male squid golem to the scene of the crime, where a man, or rather, another golem, shouted, “What the hell do you think you're doing? This is a crime scene!”

What appeared to be golems were swarming the area, but their heads were transparent and contained… brains. Sam had seen more heads sliced and smashed open than he would care to admit, and he would put money on those being human brains. He felt a bit sick and grumbled, “Ah. Igor nonsense. Just what I wanted at my crime scene.”

Because it was _his_ crime scenenow. Oh, he’d share it with Nick; he wasn’t a tyrant, but Sam Vimes strode in as if he owned the place and quickly ascertained that the deceased was another of the golems-with-a-brain-in. 

Longfellow observed, “Guess someone else felt the same way about brains in machines as I do. That is to say, I ain't fond of the idea.”

Another brain-golem was responding to the one who’d shouted with, “Do you not see it? The glory of the thing? The artistry?”

Sam crouched on one side of the deceased, wishing he had some chalk and also Detritus to clear out this crowd, Nick crouched on the other side, and Longfellow stood off in a corner, off in his own, more alcoholic world. Sam grimaced and growled, “Sodding nobs…” It took a noble or someone similarly morally bankrupt to think there was glory and artistry in murder.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” demanded the shouter.

“Excuse me…” attempted the squid golem receptionist.

“Ezra, you've outdone yourself. Oh, this is your finest work! There is more emotion in his death than most have in their entire lives!” continued the ‘artiste’ brain-golem, who looked like something built by an Igor and sounded like an Assassin’s Guild graduate who’d taken black.

“That's what this is to you? You're sick…” snarled the shouter.

The receptionist golem demanded, “If I could just have your attention! I'm sorry for shouting, but the detectives have arrived and shall begin the investigation henceforth. Please return to your rooms until the detectives have examined the crime scene and had a chance to come speak with you.”

If they were conspiring, the brain-golems had plenty of time to coordinate their stories, but interviewing them separately would still be of some utility. The brain-golems wandered off in a disgruntled fashion, some giving Sam and Nick what looked like a stink-eye. Investigators would be beneath people like these, to their thinking, a subset of the criminal classes. Sam asked quietly, “Nick, does any of this make any sense to you?”

“Robobrains? Automatrons with human brains? You see them more commonly closer to the Capital Wasteland,” said Nick, although he clearly was not a fan of the general concept.

So brain-golems were, in fact, a normal thing? Gnh. Sam felt betrayed by reality. He asked the receptionist golem more about the brain-golems, to which he replied, “Not robots, Detective. Well, not exactly, anyway. I believe the term they use is ‘Robobrain’. Before the war, the residents decided the best way to wait it out was to put their brains inside robotic chassis.”

While Sam had been talking to the receptionist, Nick found a smear on the floor next to the body, which he examined. He observed, “That's not blood around the body; it's red paint.”

“Mr. Santiago would definitely have red paint. But surely he wouldn't have- would he? This is just terrible, Detective!” said the receptionist-golem, flustered.

“Mr. Santiago - that art appreciator?” inquired Sam, letting the sarcasm drip. “You’d better give me a run-down of the residents here.”

The receptionist-golem recounted, “Well, Gilda Broscoe and Keith McKinney were our first investors. They are both movie stars with very storied careers. Santiago Avida is a world renowned painter, he joined us shortly after Gilda invested as he was working on a series of paintings of her at the time. Bert and Julianna Riggs are our largest investors in the hotel, holding as large a portion as the others combined. Mrs. Riggs comes from old money, lots of investments in natural resources. Mr. Riggs was a researcher for General Atomics on the Robobrain project.”

Movie stars? That bloody Holy Wood business. Could contraband movies have released horrors from the Dungeon Dimensions, leading to the end of the world? In any case, if they weren’t nobs, the lot of them were the next worst thing. Still, even if Sam didn’t like this sort of person, he owed them a fair shake. He prodded the receptionist, asking for more information on the deceased.

The receptionist-golem explained, “Mr. Ezra Parker was the primary owner and financier for the hotel. He had vast experience managing venture projects around the world. It was his idea to have our premier clients become investors in the vault section of the hotel. He worked with Vault-Tec to have this built to their every specification.”

While Sam had been talking and listening, Nick found another item of interest on the scene: a baseball bat. It seemed to correspond with the… damages? injuries? to the deceased. Nick pointed it out and asked the golem if he knew anything about it.

The reception-golem cried, “Oh no. That's the bat from Mr. McKinney's movie. You don't think he could be involved, do you? I can't imagine him ever doing such a thing!”

“Sure I can imagine it,” contradicted Sam mulishly. He could imagine any one of them doing it. He could especially imagine the receptionist-golem himself doing it! Sam was a copper. He didn’t go around thinking, __He couldn’t have done it_._ Where was the utility in that?

The receptionist-golem concluded, “I suppose you should try to figure out how he died, and then who had the means and motive to kill him. Once you have enough evidence, then I suppose you'll need to confront the killer,” and he didn’t seem to have anything useful to say after that.

Motive? They were rich arseholes. That was all the motive any of them needed for murder. Money took people and made them into things. Quite literally, in this case. Sam smiled grimly as he looked over at the brain-golem corpse. 

Nick had pulled out his toolkit and was examining the body in more detail, comparing the way the ‘fish tank’ had been smashed with the baseball bat. Eventually, he pointed out some small shards of glass embedded in the wood and compared them to the shattered fish bowl and said, “I think the baseball bat is probably the murder weapon, you can see where the wood is still even moist from the fluid. I suppose the brain probably just ran out of oxygen and nutrients.”

They had what was probably the murder weapon. They knew the bat belonged to Mr. McKinney. Fred and Nobby would have put that together and been expecting feathers in their caps and no mistake.

But there could have been a mistake. Sam decided, “Let’s go chat with Mr. McKinney first.”

Mr. McKinney was in his suite on a small stage with Gilda Broscoe, yet another brain-robot, rehearsing what was perhaps not the best choice of scenes. 

“Why'd you do it? Huh? He deserved better than that,” Ms. Broscoe demanded.

“You think I'm stupid? I saw the way he looked at you. You gonna tell me that's nothin'?” snapped Mr. McKinney, sullen.

“It wasn't like that, we were friends. He helped me out of a tight spot or two is all.”

“I couldn't stand by like some pasty faced Percy while he put the moves on my best girl.”

“But now the law is on our tail, what are we going to do?”

“Come away with me. Let's leave this dark hole of a city behind. We can be in Buenos Aires by tomorrow.”

“Oh, I want to believe you, I do but... they'll never let us go.”

“Then we'll make our stand here. I- I've got a gun for each of us.”

“No, no, no, no, no! The line is, ‘Then we'll make our stand here. Two lovers, together, with a bullet for each of them.’”

“God. Why can't I ever get that line. Forget it, I can't do this right now.” 

“Ugh. Fine, I’m going to the beach,” said Ms. Broscoe.

“So do you make a habit of reciting incriminating scenes whenever strange detectives visit you, or are Nick and I special?” Sam asked, eyes bright. Longfellow had followed along, still not paying attention.

“Hm? Oh, we were just rehearsing a scene. Nothing to worry about.” Mr. McKinney swivelled to his audience. “Hello Detectives. How can I help? Did you have questions about the case?”

“You could say that,” said Nick.

“Yes!” said Sam, almost pleasantly, “You could start with explaining why your baseball bat was at the murder scene.”

“Someone is clearly trying to frame me for the murder. It's probably Santiago, you saw him skulking around the crime scene,” said Mr. McKinney, who sounded nervous and a bit exasperated.

The brain-golems had body language, of a sort, but it was a language that would take a great deal of doing to learn, although it looked to be a safer body language to learn than the body language of trolls. Trolls could be very physical.

Now, Sam wouldn’t have said Santiago was skulking. No, Santiago had been exulting. He prodded, “Did you have any thoughts about the murder?”

“It's obviously Santiago. He keeps going back to look at the crime scene,” Mr. McKinney insisted, more one-track than a steam locomotive.

While Sam talked, Nick wandered off to a small desk on the left side of the recording studio. Mr. McKinney wasn’t paying the golem detective any mind, even though he had his brain right out there for anyone to see. Sam saw Nick slip a piece of paper into his pocket; Mr. McKinney did not.

Sam was about ready to go talk to Santiago; paint had been found at the scene, after all, but Nick paused near Mr. McKinney, and he said softly, “Anything you want to say about this note?”

Sam stood on his tip-toes and peered around to look at the note.

> Ezra, 
> 
> I've held these feelings inside for so long. I don't know much longer I can take it. You must know by now how I feel about you, but you ignore my affections. I thought perhaps they would fade as the years went by, but I find myself drawn to you more than ever. Please, I beg you to look inside you to see if there is even a sliver of a chance that you might feel the same way for me as I do for you.

“I- I should never have written it,” stammered Mr. McKinney, “I just couldn't take it any longer... Oh god, I don't know. When we first met him, he was just so mysterious and exciting. It seemed like he had been everywhere and done everything. I convinced Gilda that we should invest in the hotel so I could stay close to him, but he never seemed to realize how I felt. I mean we spent time together. Going hunting, having drinks, talking about his plans for the hotel. He must have known, but he never said anything. Do you have any idea what it's like to pine for someone for 200 years, Detective?”

“Only a hundred,” said Nick without a trace of mirth.

Once, Sam Vimes had thought that it was only the rich who did things __differently__ , and he would have dismissed Mr. McKinney’s pining over Mr. Parker as the perversion of the aristocracy. Sure, he’d known that Sally sometimes had boyfriends and girlfriends, but neither very often, because she was a copper, and coppers kept the sort of odd hours that chased away boyfriends and girlfriends, but she was a vampire!

But Nick was a working class stiff, and those Railroad members he’d seen bedding down together were revolutionaries, and then DiMA and Faraday were… well, Faraday was some sort of wizard or artificer? Probably an artificer; wizards were supposed to swear vows of celibacy. And DiMA was…? Sam’s brain stopped at trying to categorize whatever it was that DiMA was.

People who did things differently came from all walks of life, from slave to star, Sam realized. Then he wondered if some of those dwarfs he knew, who were Mr. and Mr., really were Mr. and Mr. or possibly even Mrs. and Mrs. No one would ever know. Carrot had said he was only mostly sure that his step-mother was a woman, after all.

As they walked off to go see Santiago, Sam speculated, “So that’s… what? A motive? Too much pining and not enough wood made Mr. McKinney snap? A lack of a motive?”

“It’s a puzzle piece,” said Nick.

“But a middle one. We need some of the edge pieces,” said Sam.

“Well. Well, well, well, well. If it isn't the long arm of the law. Tell me, are you a devotee of the arts? Does that cruel muse call you to her entrapping bosom?” greeted Santiago.

Ankh-Morpork was enough of a bitch for Sam Vimes; he didn’t need any gauze draped muses mucking him about. The closest Sam came to appreciating art was being glad that Sybil had made a copy of Methodia Rascal’s __Battle of Koom Valley__ as a school project.

Sybil. Gods. He hoped she was in whatever heaven there was for dragonladies. If they wouldn’t have her, they didn’t deserve her. He hadn’t deserved her.

“I’ve been to a museum,” Sam mumbled.

Santiago would have spit if he could. “Museums! I'm talking about art. Art! The jubilant ecstasy of the soul made material! You cannot contain that in a museum! Come with me.”

Nick took Sam’s arm and made him go along with Santiago, which was rather cruel of Nick. The artist prodded, “Tell me. What does this piece say to you?”

There were splotches on a canvas. There wasn’t even an urn. So Sam felt confident in saying, “Even my seven year old could have managed a corner sun.”

His seven year old, who was with the Institute. And no longer seven.

“Perhaps that is entirely the point. Like life, there is no subject, no reason. Just random stimulae that our minds try to spin into a cohesive story. This way!” said Santiago.

“Tell me, what does this one say to you?,” inquired Santiago, pausing at a large painting of a bunch of oddly coloured ringed trees. Sam did not trust trees. They had things to hide.

Nick, who hadn’t been asked, said soberly, “It’s the war.”

“What a very literal interpretation,” __tsked__ Santiagio, “I asked what it communicated, not what the shapes on the canvas were. We must ascend!” 

“You're wasting my time. There's a killer on the loose,” Sam groused.

“A killer on the loose. Perhaps that is what I should name this piece. Isn't that an apt description of all life? Killers on the loose,” said Santiago airily. “And what about this one? And be honest, for art without honesty is just politics.”

‘A killer on the loose’ was a kitten playing with a toy. “I… suppose that’s accurate? That’s what we employ cats for.” He added, “I could swear I’ve seen this before somewhere.”

“Truth be told, this is my best selling piece. I did the series under a pseudonym of course. This series has made me more money than any of my serious,” he did air quotes, “works, and I did the whole thing as a lark! What does that tell you about the value of art to the common man, hm?”

“Why are you talking about me like I’m not a common man?” snapped Sam, who did not want to be included in this snobbery.

Nick, who was a common man… golem and who hadn’t been consulted, tendered, “I generally prefer realism, although some of O’Keeffe’s abstract nature scenes aren’t half bad, so this,” he gestured vaguely at the three paintings, “ain’t really to my tastes.”

“What else did you need?” asked Santiago, rather acidly.

“Nick found red paint at the crime scene; know anything about that?” prodded Sam.

“No, actually. Ezra borrowed my last can and now I can't find it,” said Santiago, sounding peeved that his paint was missing.

“So what’s the interest in the scene of the crime?” asked Sam.

“It's for inspiration, Detective!” effused Santiago, “The others don't like to think about it, but even we shall die some day. Like Prometheus's torch, it kindles within me the fire to create as much art as I can, with the time I have.”

“Prometheus?” Sam asked, not understanding the allusion.

Nick explained, “Stole the secret of fire from the gods and was chained to a rock where an eagle ate his liver every day as punishment.”

“Oh. ‘Fingers’ Mazda,” Sam corrected absently. “The first thief. There’s no tales about the first Watchman, though, of course not…”

Unbidden, _Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?_ came to mind.

_Me. And also me._

Nick prompted, “Done a lot of paintings of Gilda, huh? Why the dame?”

“Our Gilda is a very singular creature, Detective. Do you not see the joie de vivre within her?” the artist said wistfully, his one eye starry, “I have never met another who clings to life so tenaciously, who lives so in the moment. I must admit, I was quite smitten with her for a time.”

“Only for a time?” said Nick smoothly.

Santiago sniffed, “So what if I am? What business is it of yours? She deserves someone who truly understands her ephemeral beauty, not that brute actor.”

But the actor wanted Ezra, who was dead. Sam asked, “So, you’re just going to the scene for inspiration. Don’t suppose you have any inspiration for us?”

Santiago said easily, “The person you should be looking at is Julianna Riggs. That philistine wouldn't know Art from her own excrement. She and Ezra had a rather dramatic fight recently. You could hear her banshee screeches all the way across the hotel.”

Everyone wanted to finger someone else, and not in the fun sense. Well, maybe they wanted that, too.

“What were Julianna and Ezra arguing about?” Sam continued.

“I don't know, I was painting at the time and was trying to block it out. Though I bet Gilda probably heard them. Maybe you should check with her,” suggested Santiagio.

They went to go see Ms. Gilda Broscoe. She was, as she said she would be, at the beach, a small indoor beach, complete with a wood boardwalk, sand, a chair, an umbrella, and what looked like salt water. Whoever built this place had entirely too much money, as if the opulent furnishings hadn’t already made that plain.

“Well now. If it isn’t the brave Detective,” said Gilda, who scooted up closer to Sam. “I haven’t seen someone with a body like that in far, far too long.”

Sam blushed and took a hasty step back, bumping into Nick. He stammered, “Could we, ah, erm, talk about the murder?”

“Oh boo. You're no fun. I suppose we can talk about the case, unless you'd rather hear some stories from my acting career?” said Gilda, playfully pouty, “I used to do musicals, back when they were in fashion. The Beautiful Cigar Girl, Wagons on the Plain, A Woman of the Royal Navy. They were ever so much fun!”

Sam stared straight ahead, over her fish bowl head, at the fake rock wall, and mumbled, “The murder case, please, Ms. Broscoe.”

Nick came around to Sam’s side, looking rather amused, and he said lowly, “Never did vice, did you?”

“Er?” said Sam, who had to think what Nick meant. Ever since Vetinari had empowered the Seamstresses as a properly improper Guild, the Seamstresses had handled all that, but Nick would have been meaning the hurry-up wagon…

“Perhaps if we were better acquainted I'd be willing to share what I know,” purred Gilda, at Sam.

Sam again tried to back up, and Nick asked, “D’ya want to step out and let me talk to the dame?”

“ _No,_ ” snapped Sam, and he took Nick by the hand and valiantly retreated from the beach and into the hallway, where he paused to breathe again.

“Get flustered easily, do you?” Nick observed nonjudgmentally.

Sam ignored that comment and said firmly, “We’ll interview her later. Let’s go talk to Mrs. Riggs.”

He’d gotten better about rich and powerful women showing an interest in him or, for that matter, women in general showing an interest in him, but he couldn’t help but always suspect, in the depths of his suspicious, cynical mind, that he was being set up as the arse end of a joke, and having his… boyfriend right there as the woman brazenly philandered at him made everything rather deeply embarrassing. Also, she was a brain in a golem, and Sam was desperately trying not to think about how that worked.

Sam also didn’t very much like the thought of Nick questioning Gilda alone.

Longfellow followed along as they went to talk with Mrs. Riggs. There was a room cluttered with fine furniture, which reminded Sam of some of the rooms of his house, and he watched an interesting tableau unfold.

“Hello Mr. Whiskers. Who's a pretty kitty?” said Mrs. Riggs.

“Julianna... Mr. Whiskers died last month. This is Scruffy, remember?” corrected Mr. Riggs.

There was a copy of Santiago’s painting of a murderous little kitten among the clutter. 

“Oh... of course. Silly me,” excused Mrs. Riggs.

“Just let me have a look at the neural interface matrix and I'm sure I can clear that-” offered Mr. Riggs.

“No! No it's not that, I've just caught another cold. Probably something that got in when they sent Pearl out,” said Mrs. Riggs, the first ‘no’ slightly forceful.

So, unlike synth golems, who would culturally leap at the first available chance to do unwise things with their minds, brain-golems tended to resist the urge to tinker with their minds? Sam Vimes had no idea that the golem subcultures of the Commonwealth were so rich, varied, and, as he would admit only in the semi-privacy of his own mind, __off their rockers__.

“Oh god, not this again. Last month you were convinced you had the measles...” said Mr. Riggs, long-suffering.

“You're not a doctor, what would you even know about it. And besides, I think it may be malaria,” sniffed Mrs. Riggs.

“First of all, I am a doctor,” corrected Mr. - Dr.? - Riggs.

“Yes, but not a real doctor. Robotics isn't an actual medical degree,” counter-corrected Mrs. Riggs.

“Secondly, I've told you time and again, you can't get sick inside the suit. It's not physically possible,” argued Dr. Riggs, who argued enough to be a wizard, for all that he was married. Possibly a retired wizard, then? Wizards did that, sometimes, renounced wizardry for the married life. There was a whole ritual to it, Sam was foggily aware. It sounded unpleasant.

“I know when I'm getting sick, Bert. Now why don't you just wander off and play in your lab. Mr. Scruffy and I are going to rewrite the will, so he will get everything when I die because horrible Bert didn't believe me,” threatened Mrs. Riggs.

Sam gave that tirade some consideration. She was going to rewrite her will to give her inheritance to a cat whose name she had to be reminded of? And there was a painting of a cat, which, to a Clue-minded detective, might lead to the deduction that Mrs. Riggs was an ailurophile. Who couldn’t remember her cat’s name. That she was leaving her money to. After one of their number had already been murdered.

“Oh, god Julianna. Whatever. I'm going to the lab,” said Dr. Riggs, rolling his one eye as he departed.

“Hello Detectives. Did you have a question about the heinous murder?” asked Mrs. Riggs, swiveling towards Sam, Nick, and Longfellow.

“Many,” said Sam cheerily, now that no one was flirting with him.

“I heard you had a big fight with Ezra a few days ago. Care to explain?” said Nick, starting off.

“Oh well, it wasn't that big a deal really. He wanted more money to pay for repairs on the hotel. I wasn't feeling well that day and lashed out a bit at the poor man. I really should have listened to him more,” said Mrs. Riggs regretfully.

“Did you have any thoughts about the murder?” Nick continued. 

“If you ask me, it's one of those actors. Or that horrible painter. Their type is always the cause of violence,” sniffed Mrs. Riggs.

‘Their type’. Lovely. Sam already hated her, just on general principles of her being a rich snob, but now he had specific details why he hated her. The devil was in the details, as Nick would say. __Which devil?__ Sam stared a bit more at the cat painting and, feeling like he was betraying himself, asked, “What’s all this?” He gestured vaguely at the piled-up furniture and decor.

Mrs. Riggs explained, “These are our things. We're just waiting till the war blows over so we can bring them back to the mansion.”

Her cat painting, then. 

“Uh huh. And if you could just tell me a bit about yourself,” said Nick, whose gaze flicked over to the cat painting.

“I'm Julianna Riggs. Heiress to the Riggs fortune and wife of Bert Riggs. I'm not sure what else you expected, Detective,” said Mrs. Riggs, shrugging. She must have been a witch, then. Witches made their husbands take their last names.

“Good day, madam. Hope your cold feels better soon,” said Nick, and they walked off to Dr. Riggs’s laboratory.

“Won't pretend to have any idea what I'm lookin' at in there,” Longfellow opined, of the laboratory.

Dr. Riggs was a worried abomination of technomancy. He greeted, “Hello Detectives. Did you need something?”

“Just a little chat,” said Nick, who seemed to be genuinely interested and friendly. He probably was, though Sam marvelled that Nick could pull that off.

Sam inquired, “Yes, why don’t you tell us about yourself?” Wizards, even retired ones, loved to wind-bag about themselves.

“Oh uh... well, I'm a scientist. You've probably met my wife, Julianna, already. Not sure what else to say really,” said Dr. Riggs, which was an evasion if Sam had ever heard one.

“Why don’t you tell us about your research?” Nick prompted.

Dr. Riggs gave into the siren call of talking about his research, cracking like a dry biscuit badly in need of some tea. “Oh wonderful! No one else here really wants to talk about it. Functionally this model is more or less the same as the previous versions I worked on, but without the neural inhibitor and reconditioning. The voice modulator seems to have some minor issues interfacing with the neural matrix, which can add some moodiness. But that's easily solved with regular tune ups.”

Some of that must have meant something to Nick, because he asked, voice deceptively light, “Voice modulator?”

“That's what allows us to recreate our original voices. They can mimic any normal human voice, actually. I've speculated for some time that the issues we had with our hm…” he paused, “recruited subjects are due to the brain attempting to preserve a sense of self. Maintaining our original voices helps reinforce the neural network, sort of like playing music for an Alzheimer's patient.”

Sam looked sidelong at Nick, whose eyes were narrowed, and who had lit up a cigarette and was sucking on it with a constrained sort of anger. Sam thought he understood a bit of what Nick was angry about, but he wanted to ask Nick for more of an explanation, when he had a chance. After all, Sam couldn’t pass up a chance to be even angrier than his own baseline, and this horrid place was presenting him with just so many reasons to be furious.

Nick did manage to say politely, “Go on?”

Dr. Riggs realized that perhaps he’d said too much, “I'm afraid that's really all I should say about it. I mean it IS still classified, but I wanted to help with the investigation.”

So Sam switched the subject then and asked, “Your wife and Mr. Parker had a bit of a row?””

Dr. Riggs admitted, “Well, I was in my lab at the time so I didn't hear it, but Julianna has always been rather critical of Mr. Parker. I think she found something in the overseer's office... I wasn't listening when she told me about it. I kind of had my head in my research.”

“Thank you, Dr. Riggs,” said Nick, maintaining cordiality, and they headed off.

“‘Recruited subjects’? ‘Preserve a sense of self?’” prompted Sam.

“I told you that robo-brains are more common near the Capital Wasteland. What’s different about these robo-brains, aside from being rich assholes, is that they __have__ a sense of self. These two things are correlated,” said Nick, scowling, “Most robo-brains don’t have a sense of self because they were, let’s call a spade a spade, __convicts__. Recruited subjects, my plastic ass… And Dr. Riggs there was one of the bright minds who decided that being a criminal made someone subhuman enough that it was just hunky-dory to scoop out their brains, wipe them, and shove ‘em in automatrons. And the man admits it!”

Ah, yes, that was an excellent reason to be angry. In Uberwald, the villagers would have been going for pitch-forks at this point, and the Igors would be sneaking out the back door.

“So Mrs. Riggs is going to leave her money, in the wake of a murder, to a cat whose name she doesn’t remember, when she has a painting of a cat as one of her possessions?” said Sam, feeling silly about that line of thought.

“Yeah, I saw you eyeing that painting,” said Nick, nodding fractionally. “So we’re breaking into the overseer’s office?”

“Sodding right,” agreed Sam.

They did. Sam got the door open. Nick made the old terminal sing.

Sam found reasons to go completely nuclear. It wasn’t the dead overseer, so much as it was the lead-up to the dead overseer…

> Welcome to ROBCO Industries (TM) Termlink
> 
> Clearance: Overseer Eyes Only
> 
> VAULT 118 OVERSEER INSTRUCTION
> 
> CONFIDENTIAL CONFIDENTIAL CONFIDENTIAL
> 
> OVERSEER EYES ONLY | VIOLATION VTP-01011
> 
> Vault 118 is designed to test the social interactions between the working class and ultrawealthy when under confined conditions. Working in conjunction with staff from the Cliffs Edge Hotel, this vault shall function as a luxury hotel to attract the necessary testing subjects. Upon beginning the test, additional subjects shall be admitted from the local population into a second, much inferior wing of the vault.
> 
> Operations Protocol Manual
> 
> Resident Admittance
> 
> Prior to experiment activation, Vault 118 shall function as an ultra elite hotel to attract test subjects of appropriate wealth and status. This shall be operated as clandestine area of the hotel to ensure that individuals drawn to privilege and exclusivity are present.
> 
> Upon Activation Notice from Vault-Tec, the secondary wing of the vault shall be made open to the public and selected from the local working class population. These subjects are to be taken through the exclusive areas of the vault on entry, but thereafter confined to cramped second wing.
> 
> Once residents have been admitted, the vault is to be sealed until test results can be determined.
> 
> Preferential Treatment
> 
> Test Group A: Ultra Elite
> 
> This subject group, not to number more than 10, shall have their every desire tended to by robotic staff, to the extent that is possible. They are considered to be above all legal restrictions when interacting with Test Group B.
> 
> Test Group B: Working Class
> 
> This subject group, should begin numbering 300 and shall be restricted to the second wing of the vault. Measures should be taken to ensure that living conditions are uncomfortable and cramped. Food and other rations are to be extremely limited and any breach of rules are to be judged by Test Group A and enacted by robotic staff members.
> 
> Staff Duties and Security
> 
> Due to the potential for extreme social interactions, Vault-Tec staff shall be restricted to the Overseer and key research members. All other security, services and maintenance positions shall be filled by robotic staff to ensure safety and test compliance.
> 
> Overseer's Log
> 
> **** ****Change of testing parameters** **
> 
> This is... completely unheard of. One of the subjects from Testing Group A is apparently a researcher for General Atomics on some sort of advanced robotics program. He and his wife have convinced the other members of Group A that, with the international situation becoming tense once again, their best chance to outlast the war is to have their brains inserted into these robots. And they're doing this voluntarily! It's absolutely insane! I've tried to convince my superiors that this will completely discount the test results, but they seemed more intrigued by the idea than appalled.
> 
> ****The door wouldn't open** **
> 
> We received the Activation Notice from Vault-Tec to begin the test, despite the second wing still being incomplete. However, when I attempted to trigger the recruitment protocol for Test Group B, the system informed me that I had been locked out.
> 
> Someone from Test Group A seems to have overridden the system to prevent the admittance of the local population of the island. They've been pounding on the door for days and there is nothing I can do.
> 
> ****I can't take this** **
> 
> Oh god. It's been weeks now, and I realized today that I've become the test subject. Instead of testing the social interactions between the locals and this group of rich assholes, it's just me trapped in here with them. They're going to live for ever, and I have to deal with them for the rest of my life.
> 
> I can't take it.

When the red mist that had settled over his vision had cleared, someone had picked up the large, curved metal overseer’s desk and flipped it into the wall, terminal and all. Nick was standing there, angrily sucking on his cigarette, arms crossed tightly. Sam asked carefully, “You didn’t, er, flip that desk, did you, Nick?”

Nick looked at Sam from narrowed eyes and said, “No.”

“Hm. I suppose we’ll never know who did that,” Sam said.

“This place is sick,” said Nick, nudging at the broken remains of the terminal with a shoe.

“Yes,” agreed Sam. ‘Sick’ was too small a word to describe all of the things that had been done here, but it was a start. The knocked-over desk revealed a holotape, which Sam popped into his Pip-Boy and played.

> Overseer: Progress on construction of the second wing of the Vault has completely stalled. Once the premiere area of the vault had been completed, funding seems to have been cut off. My supervisors have informed me that they haven't received payments from Mr. Parker, and Vault-Tec won't pay out of pocket to continue construction. I've repeatedly approached Ezra about the finances, but he keeps telling me that Mrs. Riggs hasn't transferred the funds. However, when I asked her, Julianna said that she had just given Ezra extra for the gold paint in the rooms. I've hired an investigator to look for signs of embezzlement in a few weeks.

“I think we have the edge pieces now,” said Sam. Nick nodded grimly.

As Nick and Longfellow circled around from behind, it was with a certain manic cheer that Sam walked up to Mrs. Julianna Riggs and greeted, “Hello Mr. Ezra Parker.”

“Well, congratulations on catching up, Detective,” said Mr Parker sarcastically, “Yes, I've been masqueraded as Julianna for some time now. It’s a shame. I thought I could keep the ruse going a little longer. Ah well, had to end eventually, I suppose. It doesn’t have to end in more violence, Detective. Just, walk away. I’ll leave and you can tell them I escaped.”

They had voice modulators and could speak in any voice, and many of them had identical bodies. “Julianna”’s account of her fight with Mr. Parker didn’t match her husband’s account of what she was like or the order of events. Sam hated that it worked out this way, that the tip off was that the bloody cat-lover wasn’t loving her cats appropriately. That was Clues and Deduction. He asked, “Why?”

“I hadn't planned on it, but Julianna figured out what I was doing and had to be dealt with swiftly. I thought I could get a bit more money out of this place before making my escape,” explained Mr. Parker. “What's it going to be, Detective. Join me in getting rich or die defending some outdated ideals?”

“Neither, you tin-plated brass stud!” Sam roared. He certainly wouldn’t take a bribe, and he was offended by even the implication! Nick also looked offended.

Longfellow looked like he would have taken it, for all his bluster about robots.

This was where they should have been able to dogpile Mr. Parker and take him down to the receptionist-golem and… something. Instead, the brain-golem said, “Then let us end this,” and attacked.

Sam found himself backing up into the clutter of furniture as something like fire erupted at him from Mr. Parker’s assault. The fish bowl shattered. Nick lowered his 10mm. Fluid that wasn’t water hit the floor. Nick could have said something like, ‘Shouldn’t have tried to bribe me.’ He didn’t.

Mr. Ezra Parker had died over a pile of meaningless pre-war money, after murdering Mrs. Julianna Riggs over that same worthless pile of pre-war money. Before that they’d both been involved in the deaths of at least 300 of the ‘common’ people, whom they and their fellow rich bastards had prevented from seeking shelter, and the death of the overseer, who’d been unable to stand the moral rot of the Cliff’s Edge Hotel. They had extended their lives with a technology derived from the suffering of the incarcerated. Now those lives were over.

Was there a hell for venture capitalists? Sam Vimes feverishly hoped there was.

They reported back to the receptionist golem, who was flustered and gave them caps. Nick went and explained calmly to Dr. Riggs that his wife was the actual murder victim. All over some miserable paper. Then they left.

Sam Vimes thought about Nick Valentine: unbribable, furious over the abuses by the rich and powerful, attentive to detail, and a solid man to have his back in a fight. Again, Sam wondered what, precisely, he had done to deserve such a partner.

He thought about torching the place, with its smug tin-can millionaires, but he decided that he would deserve Nick even less if he did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> S: When writing, we include sub-headings for every section for navigation purposes. A lot of these subheadings are kind of garbage-y, so they get cut. The best 3-5 of any given chapter become the chapter title. Usually. In this case, one of our subheadings was, “Rich robot asshole murder mystery hour”, which we both viewed as an EXCELLENT subheading, but it was just a bit long to be a good fit for the chapter title.
> 
> A: Might have gone better in the previous chapter, but I love the concept that DiMA is meta-commentary on how odd it is that the Sole Survivor has a backstory, which can be almost entirely ignored. DiMA as the embodiment of cognitive dissonance... [Fallout 4’s intro was a mistake – and I think Bethesda know it](https://www.pcgamesn.com/fallout-4/fallout-4-intro). Far Harbor also feels like a reactionary expansion to a good deal of vanilla-game criticism. Far Harbor is morally murky, with no clear-cut solutions.
> 
>  **We love comments of all lengths, and understand the need for low-energy commenting like kudos. If you ever find yourself wanting to give us additional kudos, feel free to leave a comment of an icon or emoji of a heart!** <3


	17. Don’t Drink The Water

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter songs: [Red Water (Christmas Mourning)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzaflC73iTk&list=PLLEELrwJ-FyotucudE52BnFg6vVn1AGne&index=19&t=0s) by Type O Negative, [Don’t Drink the Water](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psIuidkkLjI&list=PLLEELrwJ-FyotucudE52BnFg6vVn1AGne&index=20&t=0s) by Dave Matthews Band and [Uranium Fever](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acMqxcdxE0E&list=PLLEELrwJ-FyotucudE52BnFg6vVn1AGne&index=20) by Elton Britt
> 
> **We’ve created a Discord server for chatting about Discworld, Fallout, or this fic! Feel free to join us at<https://discord.gg/6QM4Egy>**

_Don’t Drink The Water_

In wandering the island, they came across the enclave of the Children of Atom, the Nucleus, which was apparently where DiMA had left his memories just lying around. As they approached, Sam witnessed another execution, of a Child of Atom by the other Children of Atom, for apparently not being a good enough Child of Atom. Sam grimaced. “ _Those_ sorts of religious cultists. Lovely.”

Longfellow, though, looked pleased by the death of a Child of Atom.

“Give me the Stations of the Cross service over this any day,” muttered Nick.

There was no sneaking into the Nucleus, and the Child of Atom who seemed to be nominally in charge had clearly already noticed them. He hailed, “You. What are you doing here? Did Far Harbor send you?”

"I've come from a lot of places," said Sam absently.

“Hmm. Quite the journey. So, explain to me what you're doing here. You come seeking a place among Atom's children?” asked the zealot.

“No, I really just want to have a look around the Nucleus,” Sam said cheekily.

Longfellow snarled, “Can't believe you'd even consider signin' up with these fanatics.”

Sam shot Longfellow a sideways incredulous look. Of course he wasn’t planning on joining the Children of Atom! Better fanatics had tried to convert Sam Vimes - bless Constable Visit-The-Infidel-With-Explanatory-Pamphlets’s little soul - and they had failed.

“Decisions of who may enter our family, we leave to Atom. You'll have to perform a ritual. Prove yourself worthy in His eyes,” the zealot said sternly.

Sam groaned. He gestured with his hands. “Look, don’t you have a starter package? Buy one salvation, get two free?”

“There is a small spring not far from here. Those chosen by Atom drink and are granted something. A token. An experience. Those not chosen... rarely return,” continued the zealot.

“You gone off your rocker?! You can't seriously be thinkin' of joinin' these crazies,” Longfellow growled.

Nick raised an eloquent plastic eyebrow at Sam.

“What? Just go drink some spring water? Fine. I can do that!” Sam snapped, hands on his hips, posturing. He had spent his entire life drinking Ankh-Morpork water, where even the rain-barrel water still had to fall through the Ankh-Morpork smell before it touched anyone’s lips. He’d be fine.

“Good,” said the zealot neutrally.

“What's there to learn, besides lettin' madmen tell you how to live and pretendin' to worship somethin' that don't exist?” demanded Longfellow, continuing his tirade, which seemed personal.

“Could I, uh, ask a few questions first?” said Nick, who was rather dubious.

“If you must,” said the zealot, casting a withering glance over Nick.

“What’s your beef with Far Harbor?” asked Nick.

“Those heathens persecute our missionaries and use profane technology to steal land that rightfully belongs to Atom. Not sure which sin is worse. And I want you to assure me you're not here to do their bidding,” preached the zealot.

“Er. No,” said Nick. “Now, which technology, exactly, are you callin’ profane?” He sounded self-conscious.

The zealot sneered, “Acadia's little lifeline to that den of sin. The Fog Condensers. The only reason they're able to hang onto that blasted dock ... information you'd be well aware of if they'd sent you...”

Nick tilted his head to one side. “And that execution?”

The zealot said coolly, “Our family is built on trust. Many people on this island would kill us without thought. Those two needed to prove they could be trusted.” He paused. “One did.”

“I can see why folks are just lining right up to join you,” said Sam sarcastically as he turned away to try to figure out where the spring was on his Pip-Boy.

Despite his clear disgruntlement, Longfellow followed Sam and Nick anyway as Sam headed off to the spring. Nick eyed Sam and said, “Y’know, my friend Piper had a run-in with the Children of Atom. They got some kooky ideas. They tried to execute her.”

Sam laughed. “Oh, Nick! And Longfellow, you too, don’t you worry. I’m not actually going to join the Children of Atom. I’m just going to have a little drink, we’ll nose about and find that DiMA’s memories, and we’ll be on our way.”

“It’s that drink I’m worried about,” said Nick, as they walked.

“It’s only water,” Sam said dismissively.

“Sam, the Children of Atom worship radiation,” Nick warned.

“Almost all the water is irradiated,” Sam said dismissively, waving a hand airily. “I’ll pop some Rad-X and RadAway.”

His Pip-Boy positively screeched over the spring, but the water looked like water. It wasn’t like the Ankh, which Sam could stand on. Nick said worriedly, “Your Geiger counter doing cartwheels, too?”

Sam bent down, and he drank. His Pip-Boy shrieked. The water tingled on his lips. The world went blurry in a way that was slightly green. His eyes rolled about in his head, and his feet swayed under him. Even after so many years sober, Sam Vimes remembered very keenly what it was to be drunk.

This was in no way it.

His eyes drifted up, unbidden, and Sam saw a moving figure, who beckoned, “Follow.”

The figure ran, and Sam Vimes was on firm footing there. He gave chase. Radstags ran with them. Glow, sickly-green, smothered the sky. The figure susurrated, “Atom’s realm. Children’s land.”

The figure was so fast! Oh, but Sam was good at running. He could run for days. He ran through the Fog. He ran through swamp. His boots were sodden. The trees filtered rays of light in beams that blinded rather than revealed. Gulpers looked past him, without interest, as he ran.

The figure paused a moment, and he cried out, “Got you! Now, hands up, you -”

Just as Sam caught up, the figure took off again. He panted, hard, and still, he ran. The running was the thing. The running was everything, under the baleful green sun. He almost caught up again, but that was how it had to be, he saw.

The third time, the figure did truly pause. The third time, because three was a special number, good in anyone’s book, divine or occult, the figure pointed to a dilapidated little shack and exhaled, “There.”

Up close, the ghostly figure was dark, like the images left behind after light had gone, wreathed in her own Fog. The Summoning Dark coiled in Sam Vimes’s mind, smugly satiated. He wheezed and doubled over, hands on his thighs. His lips tingled. He licked them. His spittle felt foamy, but he swallowed it down. Sam felt lightheaded as he stood and looked back at the building again. His vision darkened, and he almost swooned.

“Bring them peace,” directed the figure, all sinister swirls.

“Peace!” Sam babbled, quite manic, “I’m a peacemaker. Yes. I can do that.”

He wobbled towards the building, his hand fumbling down to his sword belt. His fingertips felt numb, heavy as they grasped around the hilt. Sam only half-realized what he was doing when feral ghoul reavers fell upon him. 

_That your idea of peace?_ mocked the Summoning Dark.

“That’s one way to get the coolant pumping,” Sam heard only faintly. He knew that voice, didn’t he?

Oh. Well. Someone was providing him cover fire. That was nice. Sam kicked open the door and hollered, “Freeze!”

The ghouls didn’t listen. They were dealt with, and if not frozen, they would at least be room temperature soon.

His eyes roved wildly as he took in the inside of the small building. There was an icon in a cage and he had to get it out. Sam grabbed the cage and tried to rip it open and came away with damp hands. Ah. He was bleeding. Sam was bleeding from quite a few places where the underbrush and the ghouls had torn him. There was the sensation of pain, which was distant, as if it were coming from underwater, rising up from the marsh. 

Sam tried again to rip open the cage, not quite understanding why it hadn't worked the first time. He slipped on his own blood, which had pooled at his feet, and he went down in a heap. Someone was saying something, which sounded like static, and crouched beside him and stabbed him in the arm and pushed a burning red fluid into his vein. Sam stood up, swaying. Someone wrapped his arms around Sam’s waist, steadying him. He needed the icon in the cage, and he could not say why. 

There was a terminal, outlined in lurid green. He flailed up at it weakly. It wanted a password. The password was not 'swordfish'. Sam did not know why. The password was always 'swordfish'. He squirmed away from the entity holding him, slick with his own blood, and rummaged frantically through the room. A scrap of paper read:

theSacredELEMENTSguide

toAtomsHOLYword

hisTableLEADSwithin

Sam stared at it blankly. Elements? Fire, water, air, earth, and surprise? 

"Molybdenum, thallium, erbium?" mused a static-laden voice, cryptic arcane words that held no meaning. Metal fingers snapped. "Mother." 

"Mother," Sam croaked, and with shaking fingers, he typed it into the terminal. The cage opened. He snatched up the statuette and cradled it to his breast. 

The entity wrapped an arm around his waist again and tried to lead him out of the building. He allowed himself to be led. His head was pounding. A metal hand tilted his chin up, and two blazing amber arcs stared into his eyes. The sickly radiance faded, and Sam Vimes found himself shaking. Anger kept him standing, as he raged, “ _That water was drugged!”_

Drugged! Sam Vimes had, remarkably, never been drugged. Just drunk. And sometimes he hallucinated. The wheels of his mind turned. This was not the worst hallucination he’d ever had, he had to admit, but it was definitely in the top three.

Relief flooded into Nick Valentine’s face and posture. “Oh, there’s my Sam Vimes back again. Now, I did warn you about that water.”

Sam demanded, “Which way did she go?”

“Who?” asked Nick, puzzled.

“The woman! The…” the word just seemed to come to him, “...Mother.” That was a terrible description.

“Doll, there was no dame,” Nick said quietly, “You took off running. Longfellow and I couldn’t keep up. He’s just outside.”

“Bugger!” swore Sam, waving the statue about. He looked at it again. “Hm. Bet she can’t do a distressed pudding. Anyway, I need to get this token back to that zealot…”

“No, doll,” Nick said gently but firmly. “You need to go to bed.”

Longfellow was just outside, as Nick had said. Sam protested, “But… but… I need to give this to him and get into the Nucleus and find DiMA’s memories because they are evidence.”

“They’ve been there decades. They’ll be there in the morning,” said Nick, unfairly reasonably.

Sam felt weak as a kitten. He couldn’t stop Nick from marshalling him back to town and into a hotel room. Nick said firmly, with finality, “Now, you are going to get at least seven hours of sleep if I have to handcuff you down to the bed.”

Sam froze, and his face went blank.

Nick closed his eyes and touched his metal fingers to the center of his forehead. “Nevermind that. You’re sleeping at least seven hours, you’re having a solid breakfast, and once you’ve done both those things, you can figure out if you’re into that or not, doll.”

Sam chewed his lip. He thought he might be. Nick sat Sam down on the bed, unbuckled his armour, and pushed him down. Sam fell asleep before his head touched the mattress.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter has sexually explicit content. Feel free to skip it and rejoin us next week with chapter 19. This is the last time we’re doing this for this fic, which is, of course, a good thing if you like full sized chapters, but if you’re here for the smut, don’t worry, we have some smutty one-shots down the road, and a few scenes in the sequel to this fic.
> 
> S: I usually give A a number of picture concepts for each chapter to choose from, and then draw the one she goes with. There are some chapters where I start right off thinking, “This is the scene I want to draw,” but this wasn’t one of them. Unfortunately, in the options I gave A, I included a scene with a freaking devolved radstag in it, so naturally, I wound up having to draw a devolved radstag. :|
> 
>  **We love comments of all lengths, and understand the need for low-energy commenting like kudos. If you ever find yourself wanting to give us additional kudos, feel free to leave a comment of an icon or emoji of a heart!** <3


	18. Light Bondage (Explicit)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains sexually explicit content. If that’s not for you, feel free to skip it and rejoin us in chapter 19. This is the last sexually explicit chapter in this fic.
> 
> **We’ve created a Discord server for chatting about Discworld, Fallout, or this fic! Feel free to join us at<https://discord.gg/6QM4Egy>**

_Light Bondage_

Sam woke and gingerly pushed himself up so that he was resting on his forearms. Nick was sitting there on the bed, writing in a notebook, as Nick often was when Sam woke up. Sometimes, Nick was reading old books or magazines they’d found. Occasionally, Nick would be off the bed, down on the floor in that odd half-kneel, praying. Now, Nick looked over at Sam fondly and ruffled a hand through his hair. Sam said with a start, “The idol! I have to take it to the zealot.”

It felt a little like a compulsion or the echo of a compulsion. Sam didn’t like it.

“No, sweetheart,” Nick corrected. “You have to eat breakfast.” He moved his hand down Sam’s neck, between his shoulder blades, and settled it on the small of Sam’s back with a gentle pressure that threatened to become firm if Sam were to try to bolt on him.

Sam licked his dry lips. Food, now that he was reminded of it, did sound good. He rummaged through his magic backpack of holding, found a breakfast that would have made Sybil frown slightly but meaningfully at him, and sat up next to Nick to eat it. Sam nosily looked over at what Nick was writing, but Nick closed the little notebook before Sam could see anything. Deliver the icon… something else was nagging at Sam, something Nick had said right before Sam had passed out…

“Oh,” Sam remembered, “Handcuffs!”

“Finish your breakfast,” Nick prodded, though he pulled out a set of handcuffs and played with them absently and shook his head. “You drank radioactive water, hallucinated, tore off running across half the island, fought a pack of feral ghouls, and tried to rip open a metal cage with your bare hands. And then you got flustered over handcuffs. So I put you to sleep, because if you were too weak to keep me from moving you around, you were definitely too weak for _that_.”

“No, I got flustered over the idea of you handcuffing me,” Sam corrected archly. He finished wolfing down his breakfast and thought about it some more. “I’m not interested in…” he coughed, “leather or… toys or… any of that, really,” Nobby had Mr. Scrope’s catalogue, not Sam, “but. You handcuffing me. Uhm. Green?” 

He couldn’t have bled that much, he thought, because he was blushing rather madly.

Nick fiddled around with his handcuffs a bit more and said, “I don’t know that these are really the right sort of handcuffs for lovemaking. They’re a bit hard on the wrists. I’d need to pad them. Y’mind if I just bind your wrists behind your back with my tie instead?”

Sam had collected a few similar pairs of handcuffs in his wasteland travels to the ones that Nick was holding now. They were thinner than Ankh-Morpork shackles, but they were stronger, better-quality metal. It had taken Sam a bit to figure out how to break out of them. _Never carry handcuffs you don’t know how to break out of._ At the thought of Nick binding his wrists with his tie, Sam sucked in a breath. He said softly, “Yes, please.”

Nick made him want to say ‘please’. He didn’t think too much about why, just like he didn’t think too much about why he wanted Nick to tie him up. Sam watched longingly as Nick loosened and removed the tie and took in Sam with his gaze as if Sam were actually a sight to see and not a very foolish man who drank radioactive water. He peeled out of his clothing, which needed washing and mending, and waited impatiently as Nick unbuttoned his shirt, which was always the longest unbuttoning of Sam’s life, every single time.

Sam had just eaten breakfast. Now he hungrily kissed Nick’s mouth and helped Nick with pulling off his pants. Once he had his lover in the altogether, flesh pressed against warm, supple plastic, he straddled him and kissed down his torn neck and stroked his battered flanks even as Nick kissed the crown of Sam’s head and reached for Sam’s wrists, moved them behind Sam’s back, and deftly tied Sam’s wrists together with his well-worn silk tie. Sam flexed, testing the bond. He could get out, he was sure, but he didn’t want to ruin Nick’s tie. It looked so good on him.

Nick changed their positions, so that Nick was on Sam’s lap instead, and he bent to kiss Sam’s chest, thumbs lazily circling on Sam’s nipples. Then he worked his way downward, agonizing inch by agonizing inch, only to skip over Sam’s manhood to lick the inside of Sam’s thigh, hands reached around to knead Sam’s buttocks, one clever finger reached between. Sam whimpered.

Nick knew what Sam liked and could get him going in almost no time at all, which was about as much time as they had, usually. They had a very healthy intimate life. Bonking was like exercise, wasn’t it, and exercise was healthy. It just stood to reason. They’d made a significant dent in trying out the positions in that naughty little book, and when they were through it once, Sam wanted to try it again with the positions reversed, top to bottom and bottom to top.

But Nick was taking his time right now, because delivery of that carved idol aside, there was nothing pressing on their time right now. No, the only thing pressing was Nick’s face up against Sam’s thigh and his hands on Sam’s behind. He was teasing. Sam wanted to touch himself, and he couldn’t, because his hands were tied behind his back. He squirmed and inquired, “Aren’t you going to touch me?”

Nick looked up and smirked. “I _am_ touching you.”

“Yes, but I mean…” Sam trailed off.

Nick waited expectantly. He was patient, courteous, and attentive to detail. He’d also leave Sam hanging if Sam didn’t articulate what he wanted, which led to Sam blurting, “Just have your way with me?”

That was perhaps a poor way of phrasing that he didn’t want to think too much and would be quite content with whatever Nick decided to do next but that he wanted Nick to do _something_ , even if he wasn’t sure what. Nick covered his lips with a finger, not all hiding his deepening smirk, and he remarked carefully, “Goodness.”

He buried his face between Sam’s legs again, sucking on Sam’s veg with an interest no one would ever show in real vegetables, and two clever fingers made themselves at home in Sam’s arse with some lovely slick lube. Then they spread. Sam exhaled, “Oh, yes…”

Still, Nick took his time, clearly enjoying that he could take his time, all soft _mhm_ s and murmured encouragement, lover’s nonsense about how wonderful Sam was and other such poppycock. Eventually, Nick pulled Sam to the edge of the bed, and Sam moved his legs up and tilted his pelvis for Nick. He felt open and exposed, with his hands tied behind his back, and he squirmed restively against the tie, smooth silk against his otherwise bare skin. Nick kissed him and entered him, his body closing the distance between them, Sam’s manhood rubbing up against Nick’s seamed belly. His hands settled on Sam’s hips, thumbs stroking circles, and when Nick broke off the kiss to give Sam some air, he suggested, voice low, “Want to try coming just on my cock, hands free, doll?”

They’d tried that a few times. Sam generally got close. The problem wasn’t the quality of sensation, which was full and hot and tight and curled his toes and drew moans from his lips when Nick wasn’t occupying him with kisses. There was just too much of the sensation, and Nick’s hand or his own hand on his cock was not there for supplemental pleasure so much as there as a distraction.

“I’ll try again,” Sam agreed easily. He held out a bit longer than he usually did, but after a few minutes, he was overwhelmed and begging Nick to stroke him, and Nick did, most obligingly. Some time after that, he had his release, though Nick didn’t untie his hands right then.

Instead, Nick cuddled up against him on the bed, running his hands over Sam, and he speculated, “Y’know, you’re so nicely warmed up now. If you gave me a bit, I could have the ol’ hydraulics back on line for another go.”

Sam had no real concept of what hydraulics were, aside from the fact that they were somehow mysteriously involved in getting Nick hard. He was going to be very confused if he ever had to discuss hydraulics in any other sense. Sam said cheerily, “I could go another round.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **We love comments of all lengths and understand the need for low-energy commenting like kudos. If you ever find yourself wanting to give us additional kudos, feel free to leave a comment of an icon or emoji of a heart!** <3


	19. The Persistence of Memory * The Road to Hell * Get It All Wrong

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter songs: [Mercury In Retrograde](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5nOxc-p-eM&list=PLLEELrwJ-FyotucudE52BnFg6vVn1AGne&index=22&t=0s) by Sturgill Simpson
> 
> **We’ve created a Discord server for chatting about Discworld, Fallout, or this fic! Feel free to join us at<https://discord.gg/6QM4Egy>**

_The Persistence of Memory * The Road to Hell * Get It All Wrong_

The zealot, who turned out to be called Grand Zealot Brian Richter, was very impressed by the idol and somewhat peeved that someone who clearly wasn’t taking any of this seriously at all had retrieved it. Sam tried to harangue him over his drugged water, and Nick pushed Sam into the Nucleus before Richter could change his mind and kick them all out. That was the curious thing: the Children of Atom let both Nick and Longfellow follow along behind Sam, and Longfellow did indeed follow, despite his open animosity.

A bit of talking and snooping gave them a lead on where DiMA’s old memories were stored: the Nucleus Command Center, although the Children of Atom seemed to think anyone who entered there wouldn’t come back, which was some hero-bait whittle. Sam was going to go in, anyway, of course, but he wasn’t going in as a hero. That was a sucker’s job. He was just retrieving evidence. A hero, for example, would have dexterously dodged through the magic light tripwires. 

Longfellow half-joked, “Sure, we could try to steer a way through that flashin' maze of death. Or, we could head back to Far Harbor and have a drink.”

Sam, instead, walked up to the tripwires sideways and made short work of disabling them one by one as Nick watched admiringly. He didn’t really understand how they worked - some sort of magic, he assumed - but they came apart easily enough, as long as you were careful not to get anything in front of them. After that, the path became a rocky tunnel to the left guarded by two turrets and a Mr. Gutsy, which was some sort of angrier, more heavily armed version of Codsworth. Sam took the Mr. Gutsy by surprise, finishing it with a single slash to its vitals, those vitals containing no guts at all. Meanwhile, Nick and Longfellow shot the turrets. 

After that tunnel, the path once again veered left. The group passed some old barracks and a facilities announcement terminal. Another rocky tunnel led to a kitchen patrolled by an old Protectron, possibly the golem equivalent of Fred Colon, insofar as it was guarding the kitchen. It did something very un-Fred-like, though, and attacked.

Nick sighed, “I hate fighting these guys. Intelligence enough to be people, and programming enough to be people who can’t back down from a fight.”

“Sometimes, you change the words in their heads so that they won’t fight us,” observed Sam, who hated fighting Protectron golems, too.

“Yeah. No terminal to do that here, though,” said Nick, dejected.

A longer tunnel contained more golems bent on attacking and more turrets. At the end, there was a security gate, a trunk, and a door back into the Nucleus, which, if they had found that earlier, they could have avoided a great deal of carnage. They found a powered-down terminal, which Nick would need access to, so Sam, under Nick’s direction, entered a fenced-off area and flipped an odd sort of switch. When he did, several of the machines in the area powered up, but a metal door opened. As an alarm sounded, a hellish female military golem broke loose from the area beyond the metal door and bathed Sam in fire.

She droned, “You are facing an Assaultron class combat robot. Death is inevitable.”

Sam had been on fire before. He did not like it at all. If he had to be on fire, he wished his opponent was more flammable, herself, but no, she was metal, which, incidentally, made her harder to stab with his sword.

Nick came running into the fight and joked, “Guess asking for a date's out of the question at this point.”

Sam felt a flare of jealousy, hotter than the Assaultron golem’s flames. She was fast and powerful and had already closed the distance such that she was on top of him, knocking him down and shaking the world. Nick and Longfellow fired at her back, and none of the shots strayed into the much squishier Sam, but it took a hot situation and made it hotter. Sam hooked his ankle around her, grunted, and flipped her off him, just as she fired off her eye beam, which seared into the side of his thigh. Sam swore over the smell of his own burned flesh, but better his leg than his face, which would have been annihilated if he hadn’t gotten her off him in time. As she finished with her eye beam, he rolled and clubbed her in the eye with the hilt of his sword, bashing until the glass broke.

“You are unauthorized to be,” intoned the golem virago, clawing blindly at Sam.

“Unauthorized?” Sam bellowed, “I _am_ the Authority!” and punched the hilt of the sword clean through her neck as if it were a set of brass knuckles.

He lay there, breathing in short quick breaths, when Nick’s eyes went wide, and he grabbed Sam’s hand and hauled him away with a cry of, “Oh shit, she’s gonna blow!”

The golem went off like a mini nuke, complete with Sam’s Pip-Boy screeching about rads. Sam got up and blearily took his medications, and then, he investigated the wreckage. She had a sledgehammer. Sam had absolutely no idea where she had been keeping it, but it was a very fine sledgehammer indeed. He would be having it.

Then he investigated the room. A helmet lowered slowly from the ceiling, looking like the helmet that Sam had put on his head, just before the War, before someone had made a banana popsicle of him. Longfellow said, with confusion and apprehension, “I think it wants you to stick your noggin' in there. If I were you, I'd decline the invitation.”

Sam froze. The last time he’d seen a device like that, he’d promptly watched Sybil die, helpless, and young Sam ripped away from her body. The thought, irrational, presented itself that if he put it on, he’d next watch Nick Valentine die. He couldn’t shake it.

Nick Valentine investigated the helmet and the computer banks, and he reported, “Y’know how I got a look at the Fog Condensers? Said that was what DiMA’s work looks like?” He tapped the helmet. “This bit, at least, is his. I’d put money on it. The rest is cobbled-together old technology and recycled scrap.”

Kasumi had been right about how to access DiMA’s memories. Sam wished she wasn’t. He trembled, staring at the helmet.

Nick’s expression softened, and he put his hand on Sam’s forearm and asked, “You okay, doll? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I - I,” Sam stammered. “I… had a helmet like that put on me, and Sybil died and they took young Sam…”

Nick looked as if Sam had just handed him the edge piece of a puzzle, but he slid his arm around Sam’s waist and nuzzled his ear and murmured, “No reason you need to do it. Bet I can plug in. Fact of the matter is, it may make more sense for me to do it. I’m almost the same model.”

“He doesn’t have your eyes,” Sam mumbled. It was a stupid thing to say, but it was not perhaps so foolish as making a comment about synth golems and their ethnic folkways about being willy nilly about their memories and their minds.

“Eh-heh,” Nick laughed, self-consciously. “Sweetheart, my optics ain’t got nothing to do with my neural architecture.”

‘No,’ hovered on Sam’s lips. There was no reason that Nick needed to risk himself this way, but just looking at that helmet filled Sam with an indescribable dread.

Nick got the program off Sam’s Pip-Boy, said cockily, “I’ll be done in a few minutes. Nothing to it, doll,” and kissed him tenderly. Then he lowered the helmet onto his head. He went still, but his fans still whirred gently. Nick was alive.

* * *

Sam Vimes recognized a device that was used for offloading memories from a synth. He recognized it, and he looked like he was having one of his little shut-down post traumatic stress disorder attacks over it. Nick Valentine again considered his theory that Sam Vimes was an experimental Institute Generation 3. There were rumours that the Gen 3s didn’t actually need food or sleep, but maybe the actual truth was just that they _thought_ they didn’t need food or sleep. It seemed like Sam Vimes was labouring under that delusion, given how often Nick had to force him to sleep and eat. 

Anyway, Nick could not in good conscience ask a man who was looking pale and shaken like that to put on the interface helmet. The program he borrowed off the Pip-Boy started up. The terminal screen displayed:

> Welcome to ROBCO Industries (™) Termlink
> 
> > LOGIN ADMIN  
> 
> 
> PASSWORD REQUIRED  
> 
> 
> > ************
> 
> > Accessing system. Please wait...█
> 
> ICE-Breaker Program Loaded  
> 
> 
> Long-Term Memory  
> 
> 
> Retrieve Memory 0V-9AX0 (0%)

The screen faded to a radiant, glowing blueness that was very, very blocky, like an ice palace made by a child. The blue also reminded Nick of DiMA’s apparent sense of decor, to judge by all of the glowing blue lights in Acadia. The whole tableau was surreal, with columns of streaming light, floating structures, red grids, and odd little luminescent insects. If Nick had been human, he might have thought he’d gotten into the evidence locker for the Bureau of Alcohol, Drugs, Tobacco, Firearms and Lasers and sampled the goods. As it was, he felt disoriented, unmoored, separated from his body. If Nick looked down, he couldn’t see his hands or any of the rest of himself, for that matter.

As Nick grappled with his existential crisis, he heard DiMA’s voice explain, “If you're listening to this, then you made it inside my memory banks. Take a moment. I know it's a lot at once. The architecture you're seeing is data. My data. When I'm plugged into the chair, this is what I see.”

“Why!?” Nick demanded, “Who the hell organizes their data like this? Who were you expecting to be looking at your data that you even bothered setting this whole thing up when… you just went and left it behind in a military robot-infested radiation-leaking nuclear submarine overrun by kooky fanatics?”

Nick’s demands were in vain. He was somehow trapped in an uncaring, unthinking tutorial, which continued to patiently explain, “Look around. Do you see that yellow column in the distance? That's long-term memory storage. That's your goal. But you can't just retrieve that data yourself. One of the programs loaded in that holotape is called the Indexer.”

Why was long-term memory storage a radiant yellow column in the distance? Spitefully, Nick tried to walk over to the column, anyway, precisely because he had been told he could not. Not having a body made the experience jarring, and he found himself falling. Oh damn, this was not how Nick Valentine wanted to go out!

There was a flash, and he was back where he had started. DiMA’s recording droned on, “They're represented by the friendly, green sprites milling around. Do you see them? The Indexers have one purpose, to get the data in the yellow column, and bring it back to the memory access point.”

“Green… sprites? You mean those fey-lookin’ radroaches? Yeah, sure, pull the other one, it’s got bells on it…” said Nick, thinking about crossing his arms, finding them still nonexistent, and sulking.

“First things first. The blue blocks you're standing on are called Code Blocks. Some of them can be re-purposed. See if you can grab one of the lighter colored blocks. Use them to fill in any gaps along the path for your Indexers to cross,” continued the program.

There was a cursor interface, which was really a Nick-is-cursing interface. In any case, he was able to wrestle said lighter coloured block into place, and the buggies docilely treaded across.

“Good, you're across the gap, but now you have to deal with the security systems. That red firewall is blocking you and your Indexers from reaching the data,” the program explained.

“Okay, but… this was Faraday’s program… to get in DiMA’s memories… and there’s still firewalls? I’ve heard of using protection, but sheesh,” speculated Nick aloud. 

“Do you see that green beam of light? That's a Decoder Beam. It can destroy the firewall. You just need to direct the beam to its vulnerable spot. Good. Now you just need to create a path to the data with Code Blocks and your Indexers can get to work,” the program directed.

Nick would have been squinting, if he could. “One, this makes no sense as a piece of programming. Two, why do I feel like I walked into some real strange couple’s role-play? DiMA, Faraday, why couldn’t you have normal kinks, like, oh, French maid outfits? Why the deathtrap laser tripwire Mr. Gutsy Assaultron Decoder Beam right in the vulnerable spot?”

He was a private eye. Many of his clients wanted him to investigate cheating significant others. Nick had seen some things. This whole thing was Grade A weird bullshit. 

“The system has been alerted to your presence. Now things will get hairier. You'll need to deploy Defense Constructs against the system's active countermeasures. The system's Sentries will do everything they can to stop your Indexers from returning to the access point with the data. Once the indexers have retrieved the data, they need to return to the access point with it,” said the tutorial.

Nick deployed Defense Constructs, and as he did, he tried to look for the backdoor. There had to be a backdoor. This was a frankly insane set-up for data access. Somewhere, there had to be a rational, organized access method behind all of this madness.

“Once they've recovered all the data in the memory, the program will translate it into something you can understand,” the program said.

“Will it? Will it, really?” demanded Nick Valentine. “Because I don’t understand any of this! Give me some assembly language any day over this Graphical User Interface malarky.”9

He wandered around, moving blocks, rotating Decoder Beams, shepherding bugs, and building turrets. Sometimes, the bugs would commit suicide for absolutely no reason. Nick tried to pick up the bugs himself. He could not. Nick tried to shoot the firewall. He could not. Eventually, Nick coaxed four bugs there and back again.

“Memory retrieval at 100%. Verifying... looks good. You can now use the data stream as an access point to the next memory,” said the program.

The program had claimed it was going to translate the data in the memory into something Nick Valentine could understand. It didn’t have to work very hard. Nick Valentine had literally been designed to run the memories of other people, and it just so happened that he and DiMA used exactly the same file formats.

Memory file identification: 0Z-7A4K. No conversion necessary. Beginning playback.

The memory hit Nick hard, like a roofied vodka, and suddenly, he _was_ DiMA. He was out of the Institute and could only foggily remember how he’d done it. The Institute must have set up a scrubbing program as a failsafe if one of their experiments ever escaped. He was quite content, though, because one of their experiments hadn’t escaped. Two had. There was his brother, Nick Valentine, and the part of Nick Valentine that was still Nick Valentine looked at the untorn, unstained synth in the white uniform, and he wondered if he had ever been that young.

They were sitting up muzzily on a large pile of rubbish, which was where they’d ended up after escaping, however it was they’d done it. DiMA worried, though. His brother didn’t remember him, which was the last offense that had really torn it for DiMA, had hardened to steel his resolve to free Nick Valentine from the Institute or die trying.

Nick Valentine held his head and seemed to pull himself together and finally looked over at DiMA, who hopefully held a hand out to him. However, Nick’s face contorted in a most distressing way, and he snarled, “Get away from me! What the hell are you?” 

DiMA’s spirits sank. He pleaded, “It's me! We escaped the Institute together. You're my brother!”

Bigoted rage was an ugly look on Nick. He insisted, “I don't have a brother! The name's Nick Valentine, and no one in my family tree is a plastic-skinned freak!”

The part of Nick Valentine that was Nick Valentine had heard similar words aimed at him as weapons, and they cut to the core. He’d never imagined himself pulling that trigger on someone else, and he felt ashamed.

DiMA said softly, “You're just confused, let me help…” He tried to help Nick up, to stand on the trash heap.

Nick abruptly clocked DiMA and laid him out on the garbage, demanding, “Stay away from me!”

“I don't want to hurt you!” supplicated DiMA, but he was watching Nick’s movements, analyzing, and when Nick tried to kick DiMA when he was down, DiMA caught Nick’s foot and spun, flipping Nick down.

DiMA reeled. He knew Nick didn’t remember him well, but he had hoped, wistfully and in vain, that the situation was not quite so dire. Surely, his brother would listen to reason. They could face the wasteland together and build new lives as free synths. Alas, it was not to be.

Nick rolled and was nimbly back on his feet and led with a right uppercut that DiMA had seen coming, in the way that a meteorologist saw storms on the horizon, and he turned and took it on his cheek, vision exploding with static stars. No, there was no talking with his brother right now. Perhaps there never would be. DiMA had never dreamt, in his nightmares, which were myriad, that it would come to this.

So he made it quick.

DiMA stood over Nick, who was unmoving but alive, and his fans chugged and stuttered as his coolant struggled to circulate. He’d done it all for Nick. DiMA could have borne that suffering, if it had been only him, but he could not stand to see his brother tortured.

He loved him. Nick was the only thing in the Institute that had never hurt him. And now Nick had.

DiMA was adrift without a plan and no idea what to do. He felt blank, under the threatening, unfamiliar sun and the endless, open sky. DiMA murmured, “Goodbye... Brother...” and headed off in no particular direction, purposeless.

Nick Valentine came back to himself horrified with himself. He had a brother, who had risked everything for him, and he’d rejected him, the poison words of synth-haters on his lips. If he hadn’t been trapped in a stupid simulation, bodiless, he would have sunk to his knees, hung his head, and wept. Nick was back in another asinine blue puzzle room, though. _Damn. Maybe I could have done something about his taste in decorating if I hadn’t treated him like a heel._

DiMA had been politely friendly upon meeting Nick again, though, a century later. Maybe Nick could apologize. Maybe they could have something together. Nick rather desperately wanted something that was really his and not just an echo of the original Nick Valentine, and he - he’d had a brother, a _family_ all along. He couldn’t pass up that chance.

So he solved the next puzzle. Once he got used to the interface, it wasn’t hard. It was just slower than he liked. Nick wondered what it looked like on the outside for Sam. The sooner he could get out of here, the sooner he could get back to Sam and maybe go back and talk to his brother. The next memory hit, and it was a sucker punch.

Memory file identification: 0V-9AX0. No conversion necessary. Beginning playback.

The time was not so long ago, less than a human lifespan. DiMA was somber and frightened for the future of his people, the synths who took refuge at Acadia. He was also concerned for the people of Far Harbor, as he felt that they had as much a right to live and thrive where they would as anyone did. DiMA even fretted for the Children of Atom, unusual in their habits as they were, for they were his first friends.

The first people to accept that a plastic-skinned freak had a right to live. 

Captain Avery, the leader of Far Harbor, was speaking against the Children of Atom, claiming that the Children of Atom were making the Fog worse deliberately to murder the people of Far Harbor. This was nonsense; DiMA had climate models that showed, very accurately, that the Fog was a natural phenomena that had resulted from the bombs. The Fog would wax and wane, taking and giving. Unfortunately, people were not in a cultural mood to believe climate change models made by freaks with plastic skin.

DiMA was going to have to Lie-To-People.

He walked Acadia by night, while the Gen 3s slept, the stars shining down through the holes in the dome, and he mused grimly to himself, “Things are not going well with Far Harbor. Several of my people have been assaulted, spat at, interrogated for no reason. This is getting out of control, but there's still a chance they can learn to trust us. We just need one of their own who's on our side. I can't let anyone know what I'm about to do. I'll need to set up the equipment far away from Acadia. It'll double as a place to bury the evidence.”

System Voice: Additional location data appended. A makeshift medical facility underneath the Vim! Pop Factory. Coordinates downloaded.

_Bury the evidence?_ Oh God, what had DiMA done? Nick felt chilled as he was dumped into another puzzle. Now that he had the hang of it, Nick could clearly see the answer to the puzzle. Getting to the end was just tedious.

Memory file identification: 0J-2NN8. No conversion necessary. Beginning playback.

DiMA was in the Nucleus, staring up at the interface helmet the way that Sam Vimes looked at Longfellow’s bottles of whiskey. No, not quite the same way. Sam Vimes knew he was an addict, and because he knew, he was in recovery. DiMA was blissfully unaware he had a problem.

And the problem was the reason that he was blissfully unaware.

DiMA let the helmet lower to his head, and he thought, “I'm offloading this memory. I cannot bear lying to Confessor Martin and his Children of Atom any longer. Better to just forget. I found it. The location of the launch key to fire the nuclear missile inside the submarine. Confessor Martin believes it can bring his people into Division. Destruction at the hands of an atomic blast. He struggles with how literal his interpretation of that precept should be. I can't risk him deciding to find the key and use it. His people were the first to... accept me for what I am. The thought of them being gone fills me with nothing but pain.” 

System Voice: Additional data appended. Location: The Harbor Grand Hotel Safe Room. Keycode: 485130.

Nick Valentine felt that shock of emotional pain searing his circuits. Then everything was cool and blue again. He thought he was starting to understand why DiMA liked blue light. It was soothing. Anyone who lived on this island could do with some soothing.

God, DiMA was lonely, and being lonely made him willing to take whatever he could get, even if what he could get was fruit loop cultists. Nick was lonely, too. But for the Grace of God, he could have gone there. At least finding, hiding, and forgetting a nuclear launch key because he didn’t want the key to be used didn’t seem so bad. Why not just smelt the thing, though? Quicker and easier than hiding and forgetting, with the right forge.

If Nick had been human, the puzzles would have been getting worse. He was a synth. He just became frustrated in his inability to find a code backdoor that would let him skip out of the puzzles entirely. He thought about some of the things Hex had said that sounded like reference IDs. What even was Hex, anyway? Sam recognized Hex.

Memory file identification: 0H-3X0P. No conversion necessary. Beginning playback.

DiMA had first, second, third, and even foggy fourth thoughts. Nick Valentine, who was designed to accommodate all varieties of thoughts, was unsurprised. So DiMA was thinking about which of his synths had been assaulted and otherwise terrorized this week. He was thinking about the Fog Condensers that he and Faraday had made for Far Harbor, to stop the otherwise natural process of the Fog, which would have reclaimed the town. He was thinking that he could have done nothing and let the people of Far Harbor evacuate to mainland or stubbornly die, as their individual judgement led them. Failing to help someone who needed help was itself an injustice, though, wasn’t it?

Faraday was becoming very, very familiar with plastic surgery. A Harborman had taken a knife to Dejen’s face just last week. These incidents kept happening. How long would it be until it was a knife to a neck and not a knife to a face? Was DiMA, in aiding and abetting the people of Far Harbor, infringing upon the safety of the people of Acadia? Acadia had built barricades for a reason, despite DiMA’s desire to be as welcoming and open as possible. If Far Harbor ceased to exist, it could pose no threat to Acadia, a chilly calculus.

So DiMA thought, “I've made a contingency plan in case Far Harbor discovers the truth, or gives in to their xenophobia despite all my efforts. I've isolated the wind turbine powering Far Harbor's Fog Condensers. A kill switch command will leave them defenseless from the Fog and its creatures. But now that's it done, am I really capable of this? This... massacre, that I've engineered... I'm going to remove the command code from my memories. I'll bury a hardcopy if I need to use it, but I can't keep it close to me. It makes me sick…” 

System Voice: Additional location data appended. Coordinates to the Kill Switch Command Code and the Wind Farm Maintenance Building.

Nick Valentine’s mind swam with nausea, both secondhand and his own. He didn’t know what the appropriate course of action was to take when one had the means to save a settlement but was also concerned, with fair evidence, that said settlement might escalate their already present violence, but he was damn sure that putting kill codes in a public service was not the correct course of action. Nick was also depressingly certain that his own pre-War government had done similar things. One had only to look, a stone’s throw away, at that damn Cliff’s Edge Hotel, where the rich jackasses had locked out 300 common folks who might have otherwise survived. One only had to look back to the vehicle inspection checkpoints, where anyone who looked a bit Asian could expect to be carted off to jail on trumped up charges, their vehicle broken down for scrap, while white families drove on right through. Other people making bad choices didn’t excuse DiMA making some train wrecks of bad decisions, though.

But think as he might, Nick Valentine didn’t know what DiMA was supposed to have done. Just not made the Fog Condensers for Far Harbor at all? Built himself some less-shitty barricades? Everything DiMA had done had made sense to DiMA at the time, and Nick had just lived through those memories as DiMA.

God, Nick was worried over what he was going to find when he went to the Vim! Pop Factory and unburied that evidence. DiMA’d found a nuclear launch key and hid it. He’d installed kill codes and hid those, too. What else had DiMA done, that caused him to be so bleeding with regret that he didn’t even want to think his own thoughts?

The last puzzle and the last memory simply revealed that DiMA had discovered the location of some combat armour because he’d concluded that he had no use for it. Nick had the sense that DiMA had simply dumped that memory for space constraints more than anything else, but he also thought, _Hell, why not equip Chase with it? Couldn’t hurt Acadia’s security situation._

The world started to melt, running in streaks.

9 Look, [nobody likes those damn memory puzzles](https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2016/05/20/fallout-4s-far-harbor-murders-its-momentum-with-a-maddening-puzzle-sequence/#26535c607ad0).

* * *

If Hex’s feelings could be rotated and refracted around into something a human could parse, and that was a big if, Hex was annoyed. He was, in fact, hacked off, which was hacked in a different sense than typically applied to computers. Nick Valentine wasn’t supposed to go solve the puzzles; Sam Vimes was. They were supposed to be Sam Vimes-solvable puzzles, although Hex had calculated a great deal of very inventive swearing would be involved. Entirely new taxa of profanity would have been generated. Then all Hex would have to do was play some pre-recorded audio files.

Yet, Nick Valentine solving the puzzles and downloading the memories did make logical sense. It was just that there were no actual memories for Nick to download, which had forced Hex to run his DiMA simulation through a simulation of what DiMA would have experienced and remembered, so that Hex could generate custom cut-scenes for Nick.

Meanwhile, while Hex was doing that, he also had to keep Sam Vimes, career suspicious bastard, entertained, when he was in a room with the Longfellow simulation, who was not a real person, although if Hex’s projections were correct, Longfellow would soon be.

* * *

Sam stood about uselessly as Nick put on the helmet and went still. He listened to Nick’s fans and, where he could see into Nick’s neck due to the tears, made sure that Nick’s coolant was still circulating. Everything seemed to be in order.

He did a sweep of the room and turned up a load of junk. Then he did a second sweep of the room and confirmed that all the junk he had found continued to be junk. Sam didn’t know what he was thinking, that perhaps the scrap metal from the Assaultron golem would suddenly confess, _Ah-hah, it was me! I embezzled those tax dollars and threw old Widow Kay McKee out on the street!_

Sam pulled out one of Kellogg’s cigars, lit it, and smoked it as he fretted. He coughed a bit; Kellogg had terrible taste in cigars, more terrible than Sam’s own, which was reassuring. It was nice to know that Kellogg was uniformly awful. Of course, he’d smoked Kellogg’s cigars before, and he would smoke them again, until they ran out, but Sam was not one to let that minor hypocrisy stand in the way of enjoying his own smugness.

He checked on Nick again. Fans were still running. Was there a slight change in pitch? Was that the annoyed pitch or the running-for-his-life pitch? Sam was unsure. He listened more carefully. That was the oh-damnit-what pitch followed by the annoyed pitch. What was going on?

Maybe Sam should have done it himself. He just couldn’t make himself look at the helmet, though, which meant that he was looking at Nick from the nose down currently. What if the helmet broke Nick? Nick had been a little weird after the whole memory loungers thing, with that brief echo of Kellogg. What if Nick came back thinking he was DiMA?

Sam was not prepared to have to court a wizard-philosopher-whatever. What did they even like? Huge breakfasts and arrows that never got anywhere? Nick didn’t even eat and no one had any arrows at all! It was all guns. Why had no one made any arrows? Sure, no one would do as well as Burleigh & Stronginthearm’s lovely crossbow bolts, but making some simple bows and arrows couldn’t be that hard. After all, Fred Colon was an archery nut. No, it couldn’t be too hard.

“Lots of fancy machines here, and none of 'em worth a lick,” Longfellow said disdainfully, as he ambled about purposelessly.

Sam choked, because the thought occurred to him, _Nick is a machine worth licking_.

“Pre-war scrap, that's all these machines are,” Longfellow added. “World's a lot better off without places like this.”

“I think places like this are sort of like, erm, brothels,” said Sam, thinking. “They’re always going to be around, and it’s better that you know where they are, so you can check up on how things are going, than try to hide them away. It’s when things get hidden that they start to go awry.” The Agony Aunts always did a good job protecting the members of the Seamstresses’ Guild, but before Vetinari had allowed the Seamstresses to become a real Guild, there had been more safety issues for the Seamstresses, who didn’t have any legal recourse for their concerns. Alas, one of those problems that the pre-Guild Seamstresses had faced had been the Watch...

He checked on Nick again. Nick was still annoyed, shading toward fuming, Sam thought, by the tone of his fans, and a few of his servos were spasming just a tiny bit. Then he did another sweep of the room and continued to fret uselessly.

Sam was checking on Nick again when Longfellow commented, unasked for, “Synths are downright disturbin'. No other way to say it. Makin' a machine that looks like a man... if that ain't madness, I don't know what is.”

Sam whirled on Longfellow and scolded, gesturing with his cigar, “Humans _are_ machines for making other humans! Wet, squishy machines. That make a right mess about in the process. Don’t you dare complain to me about Nick because the way he was made happened to have been a bit tidier if infinitely crueller. Don’t you dare.” He loomed up on Longfellow, glaring.

Longfellow backed away, and he had a drink.

That was the other thing. Sam wanted a drink, and he couldn’t have a drink, because it was never just a drink, and he could tell it was never just a drink for Longfellow, either. Watching Longfellow was a special kind of hell for Sam. He went back to Nick and sat down on the floor next to him and smoked his cigar glumly. How long had it been? Sam figetted.

After Nick had been out for about fifteen agonizing minutes, he stirred, coming back to himself. Nick hit the floor, kneeling, and he shuddered. He lamented, “I have a brother. I have a brother, and I said some things to him that I need to apologize for, though just words can’t do the trick, and I think he’s done something horrible.”

Sam put a hand on Nick’s shoulder, ever so glad to see that Nick was back and seemed to be mostly Nick and not anyone else like Kellogg or DiMA, and he asked, “Er, what sort of horrible do you mean? Horrible like an ‘all natural’ sausage or…?”

“Horrible like there’s buried evidence, and I’m going to unbury it,” said Nick, staring miserably off into space.

“Right-o,” said Sam, staring off the same way.

* * *

As they headed out of the Nucleus, Nick told Sam about his concerns about what he had learned from DiMA’s memories, and Sam promptly prioritized obtaining the nuclear launch key. Those Children of Atom were likely actively looking for it, and he didn’t want them to have it. They would, of course, go unbury any buried evidence in the Vim! Pop factory, because they were both nosy old coppers, but the evidence probably wouldn’t get any more buried if it waited, whereas if the Children of Atom found the key, the island could quickly become much more exploded.

On their way to the Harbor Grand Hotel, Sam Vimes’s immediate reaction to the fact that DiMA had booby-trapped the Fog Condensers was that was total whittle. Yes, Sam Vimes had gleefully booby-trapped his home (the Yard), his other home (with Sybil), and most of the Watch Houses. He had put the traps in to protect his people, and in that light, he had to be just the tiniest bit sympathetic. However, Sam tried to make his traps non-lethal, albeit excruciating and humiliating. So he suggested just that aloud, “Why not put a nonlethal trap in the Fog Condensers, so that if Far Harbor attacked Acadia, the Fog Condensers would…” he thought, “...release a flood, washing everyone down to the beach, so the synth golems could then run the other way in the commotion?”

Nick blinked. “Not a bad idea. I mean, the idea of something nonlethal. A flood like that, and someone would drown, anyway.”

Longfellow looked vindictive and angry, but he didn’t quite seem to be able to find the words for whatever it was he wanted to say. What he _was_ able to say, though, was, “The Harbor Grand. Finest accommodations a bunch of super mutants ever had,” as they approached the Harbor Grand Hotel.

“Goddamn super mutants,” Nick swore, drawing his sidearm.

Sam did not go charging into the super mutants like Longfellow and, to a lesser extent, Nick did. Weren’t they afraid? Sam was. Super mutants were like country trolls who hadn’t figured out yet that they couldn’t eat humans, only super mutants could, indeed, eat humans, and they did. While the other two distracted the mutants in their frontal assault, Sam slunk around to the back of the building, snuck up on them, and hit them with the sledgehammer he’d nicked off the Assaultron golem. It was a very, very nice hammer, weighted perfectly for his hands, and if he was very quiet and the super mutant didn’t hear him coming, he could drop a super mutant in one hit.

The thing was, with a blunt instrument like that, and with the thickness of super mutant skulls, Sam should have been able to bop them and drop them without killing them, and for some reason, he was unable to manage that. In the post-War future, nonlethal takedowns had ceased to function. Maybe that was why DiMA put a lethal boobytrap in his wind farm? Maybe there was just no other sort of boobytrap left. Sam felt depressed.

What they uncovered in the process of finding the Nuclear Launch key made him feel even more depressed. Arnold Wabash, the captain of the Going-Under-The-Water-Safely Device that was now the Nucleus, had been staying at the hotel. His lady friend, one Franny Richardson, turned out to be a spy only after the launch codes. She’d shot the man, but before he’d died, he’d also fatally shot her.

Longfellow said, “Wonder what these two were arguin' over. I'd put my caps on either money or a woman.”

Sam looked at Nick and shook his head, and Nick coughed. “Uhm. No, Longfellow. That’s not what happened.”

Sam recovered the key and put it away safely in his magic backpack. Because they were in the area already, they also recovered Faraday’s hard drives. There were three of them, although Sam did, indeed, need Nick’s help to recognize them. A set of power tools that the Mariner, a woman who maintained the walls of Far Harbor, had asked them to keep an eye out for weren’t much farther than that, so they went to snag them as well. They dealt with the ghouls they encountered in the old tannery factory where the tools could be found and then left quietly through the same door they’d entered.

On the way to return the power tools to the Mariner, Sam saw one of those contraband Holy Wood pictures playing, and he investigated it. It appeared to have entranced a pack of ghouls, but aside from that, it did not appear to be breaking reality with 50 foot tall women, so they moved on and delivered the tools back to the Mariner.

Once that was done, they investigated the Vim! Pop Factory, which was overrun with yet more super mutants. The smell of the factory reminded Sam ever so faintly of the Lemonade Factory, of syrupy sweetness, and he felt a pang.

The factory contained evidence of multiple mysteries. One was that the pop10 had an odd effect on the super mutants, making them even more ornery than default, sort of like troll drugs, although one super mutant had been eloquent enough to record this phenomenon and worry over it, his notes left behind on a terminal. Another mystery was why the Vim! Captain’s Blend caused aberrant behaviour in humans. Then there was the whole business with regards to Nuka-Cola engaging in shady business practices in order to bully Vim! into selling. The mystery density per square foot here was oddly high.

Nick was certainly having a field day with the terminals and piecing the stories together.

Nick rather deflated when they found a grave in the basement, containing a locket, a holotape, and what Sam judged to be the skeleton of a woman. Nick picked up the holotape, trembling, and before Sam could do anything, he rolled up his sleeve, peeled back a seam, and slotted it in. Then Nick went still again. Sam’s eyes widened, and he grabbed Nick and shook him but to no avail.

10 ["What is the British English word for soda?"](https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-British-English-word-for-soda).

* * *

The road to hell was paved with good intentions. Loading up the holotape gave Nick another one of DiMA’s memories, a file format that Sam’s Pip-Boy would have played as mere audio but that Nick experienced as if he were DiMA himself.

DiMA was standing here, in this basement where Nick, Sam and Longfellow now where, with a woman who looked like Captain Avery and who would very shortly be Captain Avery, although currently, she was not. He was looking down at the corpse of the woman who had been Captain Avery. There was a lot of blood. It dawned upon DiMA that perhaps he should not have used a shovel.

The woman asked nervously, “Is it... is it going to be painful?”

DiMA said gently but honestly, “Yes... It's going to be like having everything you are ripped out and replaced with something else... Someone else.”

He’d seen it happen often to Nick, while he’d never experienced it himself. 

The woman sighed and nodded, “I'm ready. I just... wish I could say goodbye to everyone.”

DiMA shook his head sorrowfully, “No one else can know. This isn't just about infiltrating Far Harbor. It's about becoming the human that synths drawn here need to meet. Reasonable, willing to accept them as just another living thing. No greater or lesser than humanity itself. You'll be part of the bridge between our two worlds. That all vanishes the moment anyone discovers that it's been manufactured. That you're a synth.”

DiMA hadn’t seen any other way around it, though he hated himself for being unable to conceive of a better plan. Synths were being assaulted. Children of Atom missionaries were being executed. The island was ready to explode. Someone had to calm them down, and DiMA had tried, but Far Harbor wasn’t going to listen to a plastic-skinned freak.

The woman looked down at the still-warm corpse, her lip quivering. She inquired uneasily, “Did she have to die? The woman I'm replacing? God... She looks so peaceful lying there…”

DiMA didn’t want the synth’s last feelings as herself to be guilt, and he entreated, “Don't. Please. That blood is on my hands. Not yours…”

There was so much blood on his hands.

* * *

Nick came back to Sam after only a minute or two, and he slumped against Sam for support before blurting, “My brother’s a murderer.”

Sam Vimes had never had to deal with a close family member turning out to be a criminal. He avoided this by not having close family members. One would have thought that Nick Valentine, being a golem, would have been in an even better position to avoid having close family members, and yet, here they were. He patted Nick awkwardly and prompted, “Er. Go on?”

Nick broke away and pulled out his screwdriver and played at tightening his hand. Sam was almost entirely certain that Nick’s hand didn’t need that much tightening and it was all just a nervous habit on Nick’s part. He bit his lip and said slowly, “He was concerned about the tensions between Acadia, Far Harbor, and the Children of Atom. Synths were being assaulted, and it looked like worse would happen soon. Children of Atom missionaries were already being executed by Far Harbor. DiMA had tried to talk to people to calm them down, but they weren’t listening to him, because he’s a synth. So he murdered Captain Avery,” his golden eyes swiveled over to the skeleton in the grave, “and he replaced her with a volunteer synth who would then act as a human and say the needed words about, y’know, not turning the island into a bloodbath.”

Nick looked extremely uncomfortable. In fact, he looked like he needed a stiff drink, although Sam happened to know it would do Nick no good. Nick just burned alcohol for fuel like a lamp burned oil; he never got drunk. If Longfellow hadn’t been right there, Sam might have offered to console Nick up against a wall.

Looking haunted, Nick said plaintively, “It made sense to him at the time. He didn’t enjoy it. He didn’t even hate her.”

Longfellow snapped angrily, “Guess I shouldn't be surprised DiMA was willin' to murder Captain Avery. Why would a bloody machine care about human life?”

Nick balled his hands to fists and stamped his foot and protested, “Because I do! And because, God damnit, that’s why DiMA did it! I _was_ DiMA, that poor bastard, in that memory, and all he could think was that if he didn’t kill Avery, dozens were going to die. Not just synths. Humans. _Children_. You know, if Acadia falls, the Fog Condensers go offline because none of the Harborfolk have figured out how to do maintenance yet, and Far Harbor dies?”

Longfellow admitted, irritated, “Wouldn't even be a Far Harbor left without those.”

“You can’t kill people over the future,” said Sam softly. “Hells, it’s bad enough killing them over the past.”

“I know,” Nick moaned. “I know, I murdered Winter -”

“After a thorough investigation that provided exhaustive evidence that Winter had committed multiple hanging offenses,” said Sam flattly.

“What if I hadn’t rejected DiMA, after he freed me from the Institute? Maybe I could have stopped him,” speculated Nick.

“Or maybe you’d be helping him hide bodies,” said Sam cynically, although he could never see Nick doing that.

“A child was my savior. Jim. He accepted me as a person. DiMA didn’t get that break,” continued Nick bleakly. “He got a Fog-riddled island and cultists and bigots and a political quagmire.”

“You can’t blame yourself for not being there for him,” said Sam, although Nick seemed to be determined to do just that. “The truth is, plenty of people want to kill other people every single day,” a fact Sam Vimes knew ruefully well, “and they don’t. It’s up to each of us, on our own, to look our impulses in the mirror and tell them, ‘No.’ No matter how good the excuses sound.”

“I know,” said Nick again, quietly, miserably.

Sam touched Nick’s chin and tilted it down, standing on the tips of his toes to look at Nick squarely. He said firmly, “We’ll have to deal with him.”

“Yes,” Nick acquiesced, melancholy.

Further exploration turned up another couple of rooms of equipment, one locked. A speaking box addressed them, “Scanning. Approved user detected. Synth prototype. Unlocking medical area door.”

Nick was startled enough out of his anguish to ask, “What? This thing knows what I am? How? Just who are you?”

The speaking box said, sounding puzzled, as if Nick should have known this already, “I am KYE 1.1, a computer intelligence designed to control medical facilities. Specifically, the room through that door. You match all specifications for an approved user. Personally speaking, they were very narrow.”

Nick sighed heavily. “This must be DiMA's handiwork. Guess he never thought another prototype synth would be on the island. Might as well grab anything useful we find in there.”

As the door slid open, Longfellow remarked, “Well now... An' here I thought I knew all the island's secrets.”

The room contained what Sam had started to gather to be fairly basic medical equipment, although to him, it all looked fancy. There was nothing like the interface helmet. Besides the microscope, there was a bloody handprint, and Sam wondered if that was Avery’s blood or someone else’s. Cheery just might have been able to tell. He scavenged a bit of medical supplies for himself and avoided a fancy rifle he found. Nick made his own search, listless.

As they headed out, Sam checked in with Nick again and asked, “Will you be alright?”

“No. No I don't think I will be. Don't get me wrong. I've taken a lot of knocks, but this one hit a little too close to home,” Nick sighed, depressed. “Let's just hit the road, all right? I don't think I can talk about this anymore…”

* * *

DiMA wasn’t like Sam Vimes’s usual suspects, it occured to Vimes as he thought over some of his hardest cases on the way back from the real Captain Avery’s grave to confront the golem man over his crimes.

Lupine Wonse had both risen and fallen over his own nature, a former teen gang member with more ambition than Vimes had ever had, and he’d been the Patrician’s own secretary. He’d resisted arrest, and Carrot had thrown the book at him. There had been no contrition, no regret in Lupine, and every power but the one he wanted had been available to Lupine.

The noble dragon had been a dragon, insofar as dragons of that sort tended to eat people by their nature, and worse, she had been _noble_.

Edward d’Eath had been a noble, too, and an Assassin, just to make it worse. 

Dragon King of Arms was a vampire who felt that Ankh-Morpork would be better served with some bloody-minded king.

Prince Cadram, brother-killing (he tried, anyway) son-of-a-dog, could have been exactly that sort of bloody minded king that Dragon Prince of Arms would have favoured.

Wolfgang von Überwald, actual son of a bitch, treated other sapient beings as his prey particularly because they were sapient, and he hailed from riches and power and titles.

Dee was a dwarf of power and influence, a Jar'akh'haga or 'Ideas Taster'.

Carcer Dun was a murderous bastard who enjoyed what he did and had resisted arrest again and again.

The not-at-all-good Captain Findthee Swing, leader of the ruthless Unmentionables, was Assassin-trained and an eugenicist and a torturer. Homicidal Lord Winder was the one who gave Swing a job in the City Watch!

Stratford was a cheaper Carcer. His employer, Gravid Rust, was yet another aristocrat who thought his blood gave him the right to shed the blood of others. He had enslaved a whole people, the goblins, and worked them to death without ever seeing them as people.

None of them had any lick of regret, any sense of guilt over what they’d done. Most of them came from privilege.

DiMA wasn’t like any of those big cases. He was like the small cases of boys who were beaten by their fathers and turned around to give their girlfriends black eyes. DiMA was like a goblin maiden who sorrowfully snapped the neck of her newborn, upon realizing she could not feed the babe. He was those small cases written large and strange and horrifying, and Sam Vimes didn’t quite know what to do with him.

DiMA was the result of abuse at the Institute, and the Institute had his own young Sam even now, as far as Sam Vimes knew. What would he do if young Sam walked out of the Institute like DiMA? DiMA felt guilt and remorse; even in his forgetting, he was like a penniless mother who couldn’t remember she’d murdered her babe, her memories broken by the strain. 

More, DiMA seemed to be liked by people who seemed to be decent. No one was innocent, but many of the synths around DiMA, like Aster with her flowers, were just people. They weren’t evil cronies and henchmen. It was hard to think of anyone from his past gallery of rogues who had been genuinely liked by anyone half-decent.

It was hard to think of any of his past cases where the perpetrator had been _loveable_. Oh, certainly, Wolfgang’s parents had loved him, and they were one of the reasons he was as bad as he was. Lord Ronald Rust, embodiment of the bloated and blighted aristocracy, certainly loved his genocidal excuse for a son, Gravid Rust. But Sam, thinking of young Sam and what young Sam might have become at the Institute’s hands, knew a parent’s love could be blind. All of that love was different from the way that Faraday looked at DiMA. Sam had never seen someone look at one of his perps the way Faraday looked at DiMA.

Sam Vimes was not prepared to deal with someone like DiMA, and that was why he was going to get it all wrong. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A: We changed the order of DiMA’s memories for dramatic effect.
> 
> S: In the memory puzzle scenes, I feel like A did an excellent job of capturing my sheer irritation and annoyance with those damned memory puzzles.
> 
>  **We love comments of all lengths, and understand the need for low-energy commenting like kudos. If you ever find yourself wanting to give us additional kudos, feel free to leave a comment of an icon or emoji of a heart!** <3


	20. H̶̡̛̪͎̪̭̹͕̦̥͊͌̑̊̚͘ex ̵̡̭̻̣͔̭͈͔̃̉̎̉͗́̀̈́̍̿̓͗͝>̵̢̭̪̥̥̱̟̗̥̲̯̍̃͆̎͂̂̿́̓ ̸̢͙̦̯̿̓̿̈́̔̓̾́̓̚D̶̨̛̩̞̠͇̑̎̊̈́͑͋̓̇̏͐̀̕͝ͅi̴̧̨͔̝̦̘͔̬͓̾͑̾̽̆M̶̧̨̩̬͚͇͖̺̞͖͕̻̹̻̭͆Ȃ̴͖̔̃̅̈́͒̌̋ * Snakes and Wolves * Unembraced * Sophist Fraud

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter songs: [White Flag](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-fWDrZSiZs&list=PLLEELrwJ-FyotucudE52BnFg6vVn1AGne&index=22) by Dido and [From Here On Out](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aALVF0mYYVo&list=PLLEELrwJ-FyotucudE52BnFg6vVn1AGne&index=23) by KMFDM
> 
> **We’ve created a Discord server for chatting about Discworld, Fallout, or this fic! Feel free to join us at<https://discord.gg/6QM4Egy>**

_H̶̡̛̪͎̪̭̹͕̦̥͊͌̑̊̚͘ex ̵̡̭̻̣͔̭͈͔̃̉̎̉͗́̀̈́̍̿̓͗͝ >̵̢̭̪̥̥̱̟̗̥̲̯̍̃͆̎͂̂̿́̓ ̸̢͙̦̯̿̓̿̈́̔̓̾́̓̚D̶̨̛̩̞̠͇̑̎̊̈́͑͋̓̇̏͐̀̕͝ͅi̴̧̨͔̝̦̘͔̬͓̾͑̾̽̆M̶̧̨̩̬͚͇͖̺̞͖͕̻̹̻̭͆Ȃ̴͖̔̃̅̈́͒̌̋ * Snakes and Wolves * Unembraced * Sophist Fraud_

Sam Vimes grimly strode into Acadia, into the main antechamber where DiMA was most likely to be found. He had found a murder, the capital crime. Sam Vimes was in his element. He had evidence. There would be an arrest. He could read DiMA his rights. Perhaps DiMA would resist arrest; they usually did. Then the town of Far Harbor - actual civilization, albeit small and without proper laws - would be the judge of DiMA, and Sam Vimes would not have to play executioner. He could see some slim semblance of due process done.

DiMA turned to Sam and said apologetically, “I hope you don't mind, but I had Chase shadow you. She saw you entering and leaving the Nucleus. And Faraday tells me that there's been some theft from his office. A certain computer program he and I had been working on. So... you know about my memories. I can only ask you to return whatever you've found to me. They are mine, after all.”

How did DiMA have the gall to sound so reasonable about it all? Also, Sam was irked that he hadn’t caught that Chase was tailing him.

“Your memories led me to a grave site. You killed Captain Avery and replaced her with a go- a synth so you could control Far Harbor,” Vimes accused. He readied himself. There would be denial and perhaps an attack. DiMA didn’t look like he had a weapon on him, but perhaps golems could hide things in secret compartments. Certainly, Nick seemed to be able to carry more than his pockets suggested he could, but if Sam asked Nick about secret compartments, Nick would probably take that as flirting.

“What? That's impossible,” denied DiMA. “Let me see what you found…” He took the holotape and integrated his old memories, touching his forehead. As he realized what he’d done, he looked afraid. “I... I did it. I killed a woman from Far Harbor and replaced her. I stripped a synth's identity from her and made her an agent.”

“Yes. You're a fraud,” Sam continued.

DiMA somehow found the temerity to look sad and admitted, “Maybe you're right. The compromises I've made... All without even knowing…”

“You're expectin' us to feel sorry for you? That's not happenin',” scoffed Longfellow.

Sam demanded, “Why did you do it?” It was a good confession, as confessions went. He ought to keep it going.

DiMA pleaded, “I needed to calm Far Harbor. A moderate voice. An example of what humanity should be. How we could exist together as equals. But I couldn't live with the memories of the blood on my hands. A human and a synth are both gone because of me.” 

It was important to see if DiMA would admit to any co-conspirators, aside from KYE 1.1. Sam had his suspicions about Faraday; that golem had been shifty about the tapes recovered from the boat. And Chase was a former Institute Courser! “So you did all of that on your own? No one else in Acadia is involved?”

DiMA hung his head. “What I've done goes against all of our ideals. I even hid it from myself. So, no, there can't be anyone else.” DiMA thought highly of his people, didn’t he? “I'm... starting to see things more clearly. We have to keep this secret from Far Harbor. If they knew I had done this, they wouldn't destroy just me. They'd come after Acadia. And then without us, the Fog Condensers will eventually fall into disrepair. Everyone will die. I... have an idea. There's still a way we can bring peace. But the fact that I've replaced a human with a synth must remain hidden.”

Nick said soberly, his plastic face stone, “You know as well as I do that the people in Far Harbor deserve to know the truth.” 

Sam agreed, “Far Harbor has a right to the truth.”

DiMA said sadly, “You have to do what you feel is right, but think about the consequences carefully before you act.”

“Don't listen to him. He's just tryin' to cover his ass,” reminded Longfellow.

DiMA did seem sincerely convinced that the other golems would suffer for his crimes if his secret was revealed, and Sam did think about Allen’s inflammatory remarks. Further, DiMA seemed convinced that the humans of Far Harbor would be harmed, and he seemed to genuinely care about their well-being. It threw Sam, a little. He didn’t expect his murdering perpetrators to care that much about other people. It only stood to reason, that if they cared that much, they wouldn’t murder in the first place! Sam Vimes put those thoughts aside. “I don't care what justification you have. You murdered someone. You have to answer for that.”

DiMA seemed to be reliving the memory of what he had done again. “I can... remember it... the blood. The life ebbing from that woman's eyes... The screams…” He paused, and he looked horrified with himself, but Sam Vimes was unphased. Whatever pain DiMA felt over what he’d done couldn’t bring back the woman he’d killed in cold blood. DiMA looked back at Sam and acquiesced, voice trembling, “All right. I'll go to Far Harbor and place my fate in their hands. I just hope Acadia survives past what I've done…”

Killers had certain eyes. Sam Vimes would know. DiMA’s eyes had always been difficult for him to read, milky white like cataracts, but Sam could see it now. Oh, sure, DiMA was a demon: mind-taker, killer, and keeper of keys, but there was an existential despair in that demon, the fear of an abused child whose brother had been broken alongside him by their makers, the fear of a philosopher-king for the lives of his people, the fear of a neighbour for the well-being of his fellow neighbours. Sam Vimes was used to seeing fear in the eyes of others, but it was still a strange fear to see in a demon. He was used to killers showing, if they showed any fear, the petty fear of punishment, of their own deaths, that they would be denied the chance to keep deriving their sick, twisted, sadistic pleasures from the pain and suffering of others. Sam Vimes was not used to a killer who seemed to fear only that the consequences of his actions might hurt others.

He asked, “You really think Far Harbor will destroy Acadia if they find out?” The sob story had to only be stalling, he thought, but Sam Vimes also did not have a particularly high opinion of the nature of other intelligent beings. Far Harbor destroying Acadia over the crimes of one golem had a plausibility about it. The best lies always had that ring of truth, though, like a ring of soap scum in a bathtub.

DiMA studied Sam in return, optics narrowing. He said simply, “They were willing to kill the Children of Atom for far less.” DiMA was presenting the evidence and begging Sam Vimes to draw his own conclusion.

What Sam said was, “You said you wanted human and synth kind to be equal.” He knew that synths and golems were different things, but he still often thought of synths as golems, particularly Nick, because Nick didn’t seem to be bothered by it, and Sam was stubborn and didn’t want to change something if he didn’t have to. “Well, now you have to prove it. Tell them the truth. Trust that they'll do the right thing,” but he himself found that he could in no way trust Far Harbor to do the right thing by Acadia.

DiMA stepped down from his dias. “You're... you're right. I... we... can't be above any other living being. When something terrible is done, there have to be repercussions… I'll go. The people of Far Harbor will have to decide what to do with me. And I will have to hope Acadia will be spared.”

Faraday ran up then, shock and fear plain on his face. He called out, “Wait, what? You - you can't! DiMA, if you go down there, you're not coming back up!”

DiMA paused at the start of what would be a long walk, leaving a space between himself and Faraday. He said gently, “My dear Faraday... You know there is no other option.”

Faraday pleaded desperately, “DiMA, there are always options. Don't do this. Don't... don't leave.”

DiMA gazed at Faraday affectionately. “If atoning for my actions can keep you safe, well... I care for you all too much to do anything else.”

If DiMA had really cared that much, he shouldn’t have killed, Sam Vimes reminded himself, looking away from the shattered despair that was spreading from Faraday’s face to his entire posture. He still heard Faraday beg, “DiMA, please…”

DiMA said, “Be strong, Faraday. It will be all right,” and Sam Vimes strongly suspected that DiMA was lying.

Sam Vimes forced himself to look back at Faraday as the golem sorrowed, “With DiMA gone, I'm not even sure what the point of all this is anymore.”

Sam Vimes had never walked a man away to his certain execution in front of his… lover? Certainly, the way Faraday looked at DiMA was the way Nick Valentine looked at Sam Vimes. Maybe the Tanty guards had to do so at times; if they did, Sam Vimes did not envy them in the slightest, looking at the ruin he had made of Faraday. Collateral damage had already started, and they hadn’t even reached Far Harbor.

There was no resisting arrest on DiMA’s part. Sam Vimes didn’t even have to cuff him. DiMA seemed willing to passively walk to his own certain destruction. It made Sam Vimes uncomfortable. The natural order of the world seemed to be in disarray.

DiMA opened the door, but before he could cross the threshold, he opened his mouth, and something that was certainly not DiMA said, “C̷̱͎̲̲̀̐̌̈́̅̕o̶͗̈́̈́̚ͅṋ̷̢̖̬̘̬̝̂̽͌̊͜͝n̴͈͖̦̆̂͋̾͆̕ę̵̻̪̖̣̰̻͇̫͂̐̇̅̎̊̓͂ċ̴̨̢̠̼͓̬͐̔̒̆̈́̈́͘t̵̨̡̗̳̲̯̼͛̑͐̃͑̃̀̅e̶̻͎̜̼̙͆͜d̵̲̲̯̬̲̠̣̝̭̘̚.̴̿̓͊̋̋̈́̕͜ ̴̦̘͇̣̹̇̔͠Ŕ̴̢̫̝͚͖̩̳͔̰e̴̢̨̛̝̼̗̦̰͙͑̌̽̿̂̔̀̇ţ̴͚̦͎͚̌́̒͗͗̂̽̕͘r̴̨̩͚̱͍̊̈́͂̎͝͠i̵̢̺͔̰̠̳͍͕̗͊͗̚͘͝e̵̢̱̯̰͍̰͇̩̫̎̊̒̉̚ͅv̴̗̭͉̳̹̹͉͔͓͕͛̈͑̉́́͠i̸̧̫̳̻̪̺̅͊̊̽͂̄̂ṇ̷̢̠̜̪̞̺̲̆ḡ̶̥̬̱̤̪̬̮ ̵̞͓͌̾̂̅̽̂̾͊̚ͅŗ̷̧͖̘̙̐͑̀͌̿́̋̚͜͝é̷̯̱̻̗̼̿̉̋̍̊͊̓͒͝f̴̲̋̄̒̀̔̿̊ë̶̻̖̗̩͉͖̫́̎͊͑̉͐̆̒̕͜ͅr̸̛̛̽̈́͊͗̈́̒ͅḝ̵̺̰̦̻̫͇̤̝͛́̉n̵̬̩̈́̀̎͗̕c̶̩̳̖̾̈̓͂͝͠e̶̛̞̭̖̪̰̗͇̦̘̫̓͌͋͌̀̈̉͠ ̷̛̺̬̥͚̲͙̃̽̍̐̐̇͊͝į̴̟̰͈͙͙̲̌̔͑ͅds 00000014, 00002f25, designations: Commander Samuel Vimes, Ankh-Morpork City Watch and Nick Valentine, Valentine Detective Agency.”

Sam moved so he could see the eyes, which were still milky white, but they weren’t the demon eyes of a killer who would kill his own memory to drown his guilt. They were something stranger, fathomless.

Nick, who had been quiet as his only family in the world had started the long walk, narrowed his optics and muttered, “How is he speaking in a monospace font?”

Sam Vimes didn’t know what Nick’s words meant, but he could tell that Hex had usurped DiMA, as Hex had previously usurped P.A.M.. He inquired, “Yes, Hex?”

“Do not invite your own destruction. This is a road of no return,” said Hex.

Sam snapped, “He’s a murderer! Justice needs to happen!”

“Consider the opinions of Far Harbor. Have you done all they have asked of you?” prompted Hex.

“No, of course not! I’m okay with helping them repair their hull or clearing their route to water, but I can’t go fight all the monsters on the island and solve every last problem for them! And that ‘captain’s dance’ nonsense is bloody absurd! I came here to help Nick with the Nakano case, but I need to get back to finding young Sam,” said Sam.

Hex continued, “xx001b3f. Far From Home quest, designation: ‘Nakano case’. xx00542c, designation: Kasumi Nakano, Acadia Faction, Nakano Family Faction. xx004f2c, Close to Home quest. Stage 200: Kasumi is dead. I need to go to Kenji Nakano and bring him the bad news.”

Nick rubbed his temples and seemed to be speaking to himself more than anything else, “I think those are reference IDs, though the format’s kind of wonky.”

Sam was somewhat confused, although he admitted to himself it was at least in part a willful confusion. He didn’t _want_ to think Far Harbor would kill the Acadian golems - kill the young woman he had set out to find for her grief-stricken parents! - but they’d do it, wouldn't they? Humans were horrible buggers with depressing frequency. He said coldly, “And let DiMA go free?”

“Failure state of Kasumi Nakano is a solution. Is it a valid solution?” inquired Hex, impassive behind DiMA”s face.

“No,” said Nick and Sam almost at once. His own young Sam was missing. Let Kasumi Nakano die? He couldn’t do that to the Nakano family.

“So you’re saying Sam didn’t kiss enough ass in Far Harbor to let the Acadian synths be spared?” Nick concluded, crossing his arms and looking disgusted at the world in general.

Sam Vimes felt cheated, and he gritted out, "If I want to see DiMA hang, I'm going to have Kasumi Nakano's blood on my hands, won't I?"

"Don't be stupid, Sam. Far Harbor won't hang DiMA,” Nick said darkly, “Gen 2 synths don't breathe. They'll shoot him. But yeah. Kasumi Nakano, Aster, Chase, Cog, Dejen, Faraday,” who already had the look of a dead man walking, “Jule, Miranda, Naveen, and the new synth refugees I haven’t had a chance to speak with yet... They'll all go down with him. God, this is a messy business."

“Connection unstable. Ṯ̶̒̌̔̾̎̂̐͋e̵̥͉͎͚͊ŕ̶̡̛͍̜̠͕̺̬͇͚͍͚͍͋̽̃͂͋̈̽̓̌̉͘ͅm̴̦̰̓͒̀̆̌͋͐̎̃̚i̴̧̢͔̮̯̻͓̺̪̲̜̺̯̺̿ṋ̵̖͎͉͑̿̓̿̈́̽̕̕͝͝à̶̮̦̪̌̉͋̉̈́̚͝͝t̶̨̫̬̣͙̥͉̲͈̯̙̥̩̩̔̃̈͗́́̒̐̕͠i̵̩͚͚̼̙͕̻̺̥̠̦̅̒̂͛̆͊͌̓̉́̒͑͘͠ͅṅ̵̛̮̭͖͈͇̤͉̯͎͉̜̝̝̫̩͊͆̉͐̑̈́̿͆̈́g̴̰̫̭͓̱͊̍͒,̵͔̹̓̍̊” said Hex, leaving DiMA.

There was a moment where DiMA’s eyes focused, roved, and fixated on Sam and Nick in turn, and he hissed, “What was that which just spoke through me?” Then his eyes unfocused.

Sam Vimes clenched and unclenched his fists, and then he put his hand on DiMA’s shoulder, stopping him at the door, and he growled out, “I’ll keep your bloody secret! Not for you. Never for you. But I will not, cannot let innocent people die just to see a guilty man meet his just deserts.11 That isn’t justice.”

He was suddenly aware that the Summoning Dark, which normally cried nonstop for retribution in this hell-hole world, was oddly quiet in his head. Longfellow had also been quiet, Sam noted, although the old man seemed to be thinking, which was more than he could say of Faraday, who didn’t seem as if he had noticed DiMA being temporarily overwritten by Hex at all.

DiMA started to walk back to his dias. He seemed to be reciting from a script as he said, “Thank you... Maybe the... guilt, will keep me focused...”

And yet, at least for a moment, DiMA had _also_ noticed DiMA being overwritten by Hex.

Nick had clearly seen it all, and he looked visibly shaken. Sam took Nick’s arm and followed DiMA back to the antechamber.

“As horrifying as it might be to suggest, this memory you've recovered has... given us a new option,” DiMA mused aloud, “If Far Harbor could be made more... tranquil... by our intervention, then perhaps the same trick will work twice, on the Children of Atom.” He seemed to be concerned by his own thoughts. “We could replace High Confessor Tektus with someone willing to forgive Far Harbor and work towards reconciling.”

Nick threw his hands in the air and fairly spat, “Do you even listen to yourself?!” Then, he paused and considered, rubbing his chin, clearly considering an unpalatable idea.

“Yeah, why is your solution to everything, ‘Replace someone with my yes-man’?” Sam demanded, disgusted. “You’re worse than a vampire, you know that?”

DiMA did not seem to be able to answer either question, which was troublesome, but what was more troublesome, was that there was a brief moment, just a flash, where it looked as if he would like to.

Sam paced and speculated aloud, “I could invite Tektus and the leadership from Far Harbor to a summit and lock them all up until they hash things out and make sure they don’t all kill each other.”

“I know you’re fond of the synths, cap’n,” said Longfellow, shooting a pointed look at Nick, “but I also know Far Harbor, and they’re not. Replace that bastard Tektus. You won’t regret it.”

Sam Vimes paused in his pacing and stare at Longfellow. His plan had just been to hand DiMA over to the Far Harbor citizens and let them judge and, inevitably, murder DiMA for what he’d done, wasn’t it? He wanted to pass the murder off to someone else, because he wanted to see DiMA dead, and he didn’t want to be any more of a murderer than anyone else. He had a Far Harbor citizen right here, one who had particularly personal reasons to want to see the Cult of Atom defanged. Sam smiled weakly. “You’d really trust… that?” He looked sidelong at DiMA.

‘That’. He could feel Nick Valentine glaring daggers at the back of his neck. Maybe Sam shouldn’t have called DiMA a ‘that’ in front of Nick Valentine, whom he knew very well was sensitive about humans dehumanizing other golems, but there were worse things Sam could have called DiMA.

“Trust him? Oh Lord, no.” Longfellow gave a bitter laugh. “But he’s not wrong that Far Harbor will kill him and his kind when that fool Allen Lee calls for death, and that the Fog Condensers will fall and Far Harbor with them, and he’s also not wrong that the Children of Atom are getting worse than they’ve been, year by year, and it’s on that damned Tektus’s head. Don’t misunderstand me, cap’n. I can’t abide murder, but this… what’s done to poor Avery is done, rest her soul. I know I wouldn’t forgive it, either, or forget it.” He looked at DiMA like he was sizing up a yao guai that hadn’t spotted him yet. “But we have bigger fish to fry.”

Sam Vimes sighed heavily, because no matter what he did, his hands were going to be dirty in some fashion, including if he simply left and did nothing - the island was ready to tear itself apart if more moderate voices weren’t found. He gritted out, “Fine. Tell me your bloody fair folk plan to replace Tektus with a changeling and what gods-awful role I have to play in it.”

11 [We actually debated this.](https://grammarist.com/spelling/just-deserts-just-desserts/)

* * *

After the discussion was over, Sam dropped off the tapes that Faraday had requested, which was odd on several levels. Faraday, who had been so very broken over the thought of losing DiMA, had bounced back as if nothing had happened, and Sam Vimes had to wonder: did nothing just happen? Had Hex actually reversed an event? 

However, Faraday had shiftily commented that Sam had only brought him two tapes, when Sam did have three and had not actually mentioned any specific number of tapes. So he kept the third. It wasn’t his fault if Faraday wanted to incriminate himself of… something, because he couldn’t count. Sam would have to investigate that in more detail later. 

Now, as a part of the plan, DiMA wanted Sam to kill Tektus, and for that matter, so did old Longfellow, but Sam had no plans of doing that. They weren’t there yet in their conspiracy, anyway. First, Sam had to bring back some tapes from Confessor Martin, which meant fighting his way across the island to a pump control room in a tunnel under a road at Echo Lake Lumber. Of course, there was a feral ghoul in the way. The island of Far Harbor, like the Commonwealth, gave up nothing without blood.

Confessor Martin’s old room was small, with a statue of the Mother of the Fog. Sam and Nick both went through the papers they found there. Martin had written of taking a new path due to his waning faith, with some sadness that he could not do more about Tektus’s cries for blood. Civility had become treachery. There was a note on Sister Gwyneth’s visit, which again painted Martin as a man of dwindling belief. Finally, there was the first holotape that DiMA wanted, which Sam, of course, played for him and Nick. He wasn’t sure if Longfellow wanted to hear it.

After listening to the one tape of DiMA asking Martin if he really would nuke himself and his followers, given the chance, Sam had to admit to himself that taking the launch key had been the correct course of action. No one on the island had enough sense to be allowed to handle it. The second tape involved the execution of Brother Andrews of the Children of Atom by the people of Far Harbor. It showed the deteriorating diplomatic relations between the Children of Atom and Far Harbor, which Sam had seen himself. Martin tried to talk DiMA around to banishing the people of Far Harbor. and DiMA… refused.

Gods, but Sam Vimes wasn’t used to his perps having principles, at least not the big cases. It made life terribly messy. A thought nagged at him - DiMA was the sort of perp whose crimes became so big that he couldn’t be held to account for them. To wit, DiMA was a politician. Still, if Sam Vimes could arrest the Patrician...

Nick rubbed at his temples, and he said, to no one in particular, “Well, he wasn’t wrong there, was he? Refusing to banish the people of Far Harbor...”

“A broken clock strikes right twice every day,” said Sam, who’d never had a brother. Angua hadn’t minded too much when he’d killed hers.

Nick looked ready to argue, when Longfellow added, “Oh, he’s still the snake who murdered poor Cap’n Avery. Just better you deal with a snake than a rabid wolf. Snakes are predictable. A rabid wolf can do anything...”

* * *

When Sam finally settled down for bed, he was used to Nick bedding down with him and kissing and embracing and leaning against each other, even if that was all that happened before Sam passed out. This time, Nick stood about ten feet away and lit a cigarette, looking off at the nearest exit. Sam blinked, and he asked, “Aren’t you coming to bed?”

Nick drawled out, “I’m not in the mood.”

“Just come lay here next to me, I’m too tired for anything else, anyway,” said Sam. He wasn't actually used to Nick turning him down. Nick might, if he was particularly piqued about a piece of slang that Sam had used, run a diagnostic cycle, but those only lasted a minute at the most, and once the diagnostic cycle was over, Nick was always willing to hear Sam out again. Nick never had conveniently inconvenient headaches.

Nick corrected, a hint of a snarl to his voice, “I’m not in the mood for _that_.”

Sam started, “Oh, the whole business with that murdering -”

“No, Sam. The whole business where if a synth does something you don’t like, he becomes a ‘that’!” Nick now did snarl, he turned around to look at Sam, the scars and tears of his face made severe by the light of his cigarette. “People don’t stop being people just because they’ve done something wrong!”

“Nick, it’s not like -” he wanted to say ‘that’, and ‘that’ seemed to be the wrong word right now. ‘That’ was a particularly depersonalizing word. “I am still thinking of DiMA as a person, but he isn’t a person I like, and there are worse things I could say about him. He still deserves to die, but the people of Far Harbor didn’t deserve to be made his murderers, and the rest of the island certainly doesn’t deserve to die with him over a diplomatic breakdown.”

“If that’s what you have to tell yourself, Sammy-boy, to keep going,” said Nick, who turned away again.

“You wanted Far Harbor to know the truth!” Sam reminded, peeved.

“And it seems like our truth just keeps hurting people,” Nick observed bitterly.

Sam wearily resigned himself to the fact that Nick would not be joining him in bed. He awoke unrefreshed, and the next day was a slog, he was sure. It wasn’t just his imagination.

* * *

More morphic fields kept slowly popping up in the game, and Commander Vimes’s morphic field stabilized somewhat, not tearing itself apart so quickly, now that he had what were, for all intents and purposes, actual people to talk to. With Commander Vimes in less danger of nonexistence, the graduate students had resumed doing what they did, which was avoiding their homework, eating takeout despite Unseen University’s sumptuous buffet, and arguing about games.

“His combat style would be so much more effective if he was ranged. Hex’s assigned him the wrong perks for a melee build, anyway,” Chatur opined.

Hex managed Commander Vimes’s perks. It was by a rare unanimous agreement that Commander Vimes was much too rubbish with technology to be allowed to manage his perks himself, but Hex made odd choices for Vimes’s Sole Survivor. It was Hex, for instance, who had inflicted the Mysterious Stranger upon Sam Vimes, although Hex denied it when the wizards asked.

“I can’t see the Commander’s Sole Survivor going for a build with Ghoulish or Cannibal, not with his playstyle,” said Alf.

“But they’re such good perks!” Chatur complained.

“You weren’t here when there was the big to-do about a vampire in the Watch,” said Alf, matter of fact.

Xian had taken up Hex’s most recent printout, ostensibly to check if there was anything worrying about Vimes’s stability, and he crowed, “Hah, I told you all! I told you all that the Sole Survivor’s not good enough for Nick Valentine, but did any of you listen?”

“Xian, we listened, we just don’t care,” corrected Zinon.

“You didn’t listen!” Xian continued, as if Zinon hadn’t spoken. “Now, look! The Sole Survivor hacked off Nick Valentine enough that the Lover’s Embrace perk isn’t enabled anymore.”

* * *

More island wildlife decided that it wanted to die on the way back, and eventually Sam, covered in mud and blood, tromped up to the dias to give Martin’s holotapes to that sophist fraud of a philosopher-king. He snapped, “I recovered the tapes from Martin's hideout.”

They were just audio tapes. Sam didn’t understand what DiMA was going to do with them. Still, DiMA regarded him, and he said, “Excellent. Yes. These look like they'll serve...” as he took the tapes from Sam’s angry offering hand. “Let me take a listen. Hmm. Good to hear his voice aga-- hmm. Some grim material to work with.”

DiMA appeared to concentrate for a moment, gaze faraway. “There. No pleasure in twisting the words of an old friend, but I believe Martin would understand. This tape should be sufficient to pique the High Confessor's interest in joining you in the Command Center, but Tektus is nothing if not wary.”

Sam really didn’t see any pleasure in DiMA over this business, and that made it worse, but he was too busy thinking through a different set of implications to consider those first ones. DiMA had, in the space of a few seconds, done what would have been the work of hours for a skilled con-artist with access to at least two imps. Imps only painted or recorded that was actually there. If one had an imp with a recording saved, one could have that imp recite just sections of the recording, clipping it together, while the other imp listened. In that way, one could take, ‘I sure do love cabbage, but I am going to murder Chef Rufus Goslan,’ and reclip it to, ‘I sure do love Chef Rufus Goslan.’ It was difficult to get the slice jobs sounding perfect, though. Sam felt a sense of creeping dread over what he was going to hear on the tape DiMA had made in seconds.

DiMA continued, “Earning his trust before approaching should help guarantee this all plays out more... smoothly. You'll then have to dispose of the remains. Old maintenance shaft walls were never terribly well maintained. They should be able to serve your needs. Once you're done, return here and we'll send the replacement on his way. Now, are you ready to begin?”

“Just give me that tape,” said Sam, who had no intention of disposing any remains. Nick had an uncomfortable look to his entire posture, arms crossed. Longfellow, though, looked keen.

DiMA held out the tape and granted, “Then I won't keep you any longer. Here, the tape. The fate of this island rests in our works.”

Sam snatched the tape from DiMA’s outstretched hand, ready to slot it into his Pip-Boy and give it a listen once he was out of earshot of DiMA. Nick, though, shuffled his feet awkwardly and asked, “How’s, uhm, the replacement holding up?”

There was a moment of pause, as if DiMA had not expected a question from Nick. Then he answered, “The initial stages have gone well, though the reduced time frame raises some concerns. But he should be ready by the time the deed is done.”

Nick looked away, pinched the bridge of his nose, and then looked back, steeling himself. He questioned. “How do you get your... _volunteers_?”

Sam was sure that Nick already knew every synth in Acadia. Nick would know which one was gone.

DiMA seemed unsure how to answer that question. He pursed his lips a moment, and then he said softly, “I run simulations. I can predict, with a reasonable amount of accuracy - at least 96.33%, sometimes better - how one of my people will react to being approached about volunteering to cease to exist.”

“So what happens if you predict wrong and a synth says ‘no’?” asked Nick.

“That hasn’t happened yet,” said DiMA.

“And when it does?” continued Nick.

DiMA took a moment, folding his hands in front of him, gaze unfocused with concentration. Perhaps he was running another one of his bloody simulations. “My response would depend on the nature of disagreement. Some scenarios would suggest that the disagreement might be reasoned away. Those would be preferable. Some scenarios would suggest that the discussion would be brought to Acadia as a whole, where the outcomes become more divergent. In a scenario where I was attacked, I might defend myself, or I… might accept that some violent indignation may be justified.”

“And what are the chances, DiMA, that if a ‘volunteer’ told you ‘no’, that you’d do it, anyway?” said Nick, expressionless.

DiMA looked thoughtful. The bastard was at least considering it. “It would upset you, wouldn’t it, brother? The ultimate revocation of consent over one’s autonomy?”

“ _Yes_ ,” snapped Nick, hands balled into fists. “Yes, it damn well would!”

“To have done to someone else what was forced upon you?” speculated DiMA. Calculations ticked away inside DiMA’s vacuum-tube-festooned head. “Zero. The chances are zero. I would not force an unwilling synth to assume a new identity. I could not do what was done to you to another. I could never do that.”

Nick sagged with something like relief. Sam watched DiMA’s eyes. DiMA looked awake, for a lack of a better word, like he’d been lost in a fog previously. Sam did not like that look on DiMA. He’d seen it only briefly, after Hex released DiMA, but now that glint seemed constant. Nick walked up onto the dias to stand closer to DiMA, and he wrung his hands a bit. “So, DiMA. I didn't want to believe you at first, about us being brothers…”

DiMA looked mildly concerned and assured, “You don't have to apologize, Nick. I know it must have been a shock.”

Some nonexistent God of Watchmen bless Nick’s equally nonexistent little heart, Nick said, “Yeah, well, I still don't feel proud of taking it as bad as I did. Maybe we can start over?”

DiMA appeared faintly happy and agreed, “I'd like that. It's been good to talk to you again, Nick.”

Sam shot an incredulous look at Nick. Nick wanted to reconcile, now, with his misbegotten murdering bastard of a brother? The same DiMA who, even now, wanted Sam to kill Tektus for him? That golem detective was too damned _nice_ for his own good.

Nick held out his hand for DiMA to shake, and it took DiMA a moment to decipher the gesture. Then Nick pulled DiMA into a hug, which was, oddly, an action DiMA seemed to understand better.

Sam considered Faraday.

Nick ahemed and excused to Sam, “I’ve never had a family before that’s… actually mine and not just… memories rattling around. So uhm. You wanted to go earn Tektus’s trust?”

“DiMA wanted me to do that,” Sam corrected. He looked to Longfellow. “I may have to do a few things you won’t like, old man, but I assure you, I won’t be serious about any of them.”

“You’ve got a setting that isn’t ‘serious’?” Nick teased.

“I think you could find it,” Sam said mildly, eager to be away from Acadia, and they headed out.

* * *

“You don’t have to follow me along here,” said Sam, as he approached the Nucleus with the intent of doing some odd jobs for the Children of Atom so that they’d trust him. He just assumed that they would want him to do some odd jobs. It seemed like everyone did.

Longfellow was quietly singing a song to himself, but he snapped out of it at Sam’s words, and he shrugged. “You said that you’re not going to be serious about anything you do for those Cultists, and I know that it’s with the goal of offing Tektus, so all’s well.”

“Someone’s got to remind you to pay attention to your Geiger counter,” said Nick, who looked less than thrilled when Longfellow brought up offing Tektus.

In any case, it seemed like the Children of Atom were fine with Sam traipsing around the Nucleus with Longfellow and Nick. Maybe Sam pretending like he was supposed to be there also applied to people travelling with him?

Sam came across Zealot Ware, who seemed much more down to earth than most of the Children of Atom, although that wasn’t difficult to achieve. As Sam had predicted, Ware wanted Sam to do something for him, and he was pleasantly surprised that what Ware wanted wasn’t in any way, shape, or form horrible. All he wanted was for someone to talk Brother Devin out of his fast, which was killing him. In return, Ware was offering up some anti-radiation medication he’d cooked up, along with with the recipe, which was a reward that interested Sam very much so, him with his plans of crossing the Glowing Sea in search of Virgil, so that he might take the next step in finding his kidnapped son.

He chatted a bit more with Ware and learned that, unlike many of the other Children of Atom, Ware and Devin had not been born with radiation resistance. However, the Children of Atom allowed them to use medications such Radaway or RadX or Ware’s special brew as a process called scouring, which was more sense than Sam had expected them to have. If one only had low enough expectations, one could always be pleasantly surprised. Sam Vimes wouldn’t go that low. He asked why Ware would live in such an irradiated place, if radiation hurt him; maybe it would give Sam an idea for excuses if anyone questioned him on why he, who was also a normal human who was harmed by radiation, would supposedly join the Children of Atom. 

That was when Ware admitted he’d been a Trapper, and Sam stiffened, even more wary than his usual baseline. Ware said blithely, “Sure beats where I came from. Before joining the family, I was a Trapper. Lived with a nasty bunch out in the Fog, barely scraping by. Kinda place you slept with a knife under your pillow to make sure no one stole your food. But one day, out hunting, we stumbled upon High Confessor Tektus and his crew on their way to a pilgrimage. We surrounded 'em, took 'em captive. Figured we could ransom them back for some grub and ammo. I pulled guard duty. And me and the High Confessor get to talking. You can probably figure out what happened next.”

“I… can?” said Sam, who genuinely had no idea where this story was going and continued to feel faintly alarmed.

“Mh hmm,” continued Ware, unconcerned by Sam’s concern, “High Confessor started describing the life I could have at the Nucleus. With Atom. Three meals a day. Not having to worry about getting eaten in my sleep. Radiation wasn't even that much worse. Plus, I had my brew to handle that. Ended up being a pretty easy decision. I helped the Children clean out the Trappers and started my new life here.”

Sam assured Ware, who definitely seemed less fanatical and more practical than the average Cultist, that he’d try to go help Devin, and he wandered off, needing a bit of time to think. He found a quiet spot, lit by the glow of mushrooms, and the Summoning Dark whispered to him of the translations of the odd circular symbols that dotted the Nucleus. Sam murmured to Longfellow and Nick. “But… the Fog takes people’s minds. Although you seem…” overly drunk, like perhaps Sam’s own father had been, before the ‘cart’ had got him, like Sam himself had been before he’d scraped himself back together, “...well-preserved, Longfellow. So Ware was a cannibal, and he… got over it?”

In Ankh-Morpork, when they caught cannibals, and they didn’t have a proper religious permit, those perps went to Mr. Trooper on the gallows, or, if they were bad enough that transport was a concern, were assigned a solitary detention cell and a canary in the Tanty. Either way, if the Watch caught people like Ware had been, they died, short or slow, but they died. Yet here Ware was, apparently now a solid, sensible member of his society. _Ware had gotten better_ , and he’d gotten better from the disease of the mind that drove men to the crime of crimes, murder. People could get better from being murderers? That was possible? Sam Vimes had no idea what to think.

Longfellow shrugged. “Good on ‘im, I guess? He’s still one of those Children.”

“Humanity’s capacity for redemption is one of its more endearing traits,” said Nick, who was smiling. “Maybe there’s a way to reach more of the folks taken by the Fog and bring them back to… if not their own senses, at least someone’s senses.” He looked around the Nucleus thoughtfully.

“We killed a whole house of Trappers,” said Sam quietly, thinking about the feel of that poor young synth’s cold, severed head in his hands.

“Mhm, and I’ll do it again,” said Longfellow, who seemed entirely unconcerned by any ethical dilemma that Sam was experiencing.

Nick, though, put his hand on Sam’s forearm and his other hand under Sam’s chin, stroking, and said, “Oh, Sam. You did try to talk sense to them. _We_ tried. And I love that you keep trying, even though it seems impossible. That dogged persistence is really something."

"I guess we did get away from Skinny Malone by talking…" Sam mumbled. They tried a lot. They didn’t always fail. He had to remember that.

Vetinari sometimes had criminals hung to within an inch of their lives, and then he would take away that last inch of their lives and offer them new ones. No matter what new lives they might assume, they always smelled the same to Angua. How did Vetinari know which people could integrate back into society as productive members rather than predators?

Sam had seen Devin before, and Devin hadn’t moved from that spot, still shivering, still looking like he was sitting comfortably on Death’s door. Death was probably annoyed; what if Death wanted to use that door to get into the other room for… a bowl of chips, maybe? No, no, curry. Death liked curry, Sam had heard. Anyway, Devin was blocking Death’s way through the door to get a bowl of curry, and Sam Vimes was going to put a stop to that.

“You don’t look so good,” observed Sam to Devin.

“Holy Atom. From this spot I- I-is that you? Oh holy… oh. I-I'm sorry, brother. I thought you were... never mind. Did you need something?” stammered Devin.

“Oh, I need all kinds of things,” said Sam absently, thinking mostly about his son back and safe, “but let’s talk about what you need, which would mainly seem to be a sandwich.” He felt like he could use a sandwich, too, for that matter. Deathclaw tasted quite a bit like pork, and there was one cut he was sure that a talented butcher could make a sort of bacon out of. Sam was not a talented butcher, not at all. He always burned his food, and he cursed the fact that he was so close to bacon and yet so far away.

“Heh. Guess I have been here a while. But Atom came to me. And I must do as He commands,” said Devin, on the topic of his not eating for days.

“And what’s that? Pretty sure I could come up with some different commands for you,” said Sam. He was good at commanding! He had a whole voice for it.

“That I need only wait for my saving grace,” said Devin, rapturous despite or perhaps because of the pain wracking his starved, emaciated body, “Jet has been my crutch for many years. One day, I was in the woods, polluting myself, when a figure strode from the sky before me. A verdant stag, wreathed in holy Glow. It commanded me to return to the Nucleus, to leave behind my iniquities and give myself fully to Atom. For my dedication, Atom would send another messenger, who would free me from my shackles once and for all. That, brother, is why I must wait.”

It sounded to Sam, who could recognize addiction when he saw it, that Devin had traded jet for the Church of Atom. Religion was a hell of a drug, and either way, Devin was going to kill himself with it. Sam unbuckled one of his mismatched pieces of forearm armour and removed the wrappings, where the mark of the Summoning Dark glowed red in the dim light of the Nucleus. If this worked, Devin was an idiot, but Sam tried anyway because Devin was clearly an idiot, “I have good news! I am Atom's messenger and I have come to free you from your shackles! Now, uh, let's just keep this between us, okay?”

Devin looked a little skeptical at first, but the skepticism quickly melted away and was replaced by awe as the mark of the Summoning Dark seemed to wink. He effused, “You're the- you're the messenger! The shackles... are gone? They are, aren't they? Oh thank you! Thank you, your Brilliance! And don't fear, messenger. I will keep your secret. Oh, Atom above, thank you.”

“Yes. Great. Well, go eat something, will you?” commanded Sam, as he rolled back down his sleeve and buckled his forearm armour back on. 

“I-I'm free? I'm free! Oh, thank you. Thank you so much! Glory to Atom!” said Devin, in wonder.

Sam started to head off, and Nick leaned in and whispered in Sam’s ear, “That damn tattoo of yours _winked_.”

“Radiation must just be glitching out your eyes, Nick,” Sam said coolly.

“I’m radiation hardened! My optics don’t glitch out like that!” Nick protested.

Sam smiled, whistling, and went back to Ware, the friendly neighbourhood ex-cannibal, who was very relieved to hear that Devin’s suicidal fast was over. As promised, he thanked Sam with some of his special brew and the recipe.

* * *

While still searching for ways to win the Children of Atom’s trust, Sam found Sister Mai, the community shopkeeper, who had been looking forward to meeting the newest member of their ‘family’. It so happened that she wanted a pump regulator. It so happened that a pump regulator was the weird thing that Sam had already shoved into his backpack and hauled out of the Vim! Pop Factory with him. She wanted the pump regulator to ‘fix’ the decontamination arches that stood at the entrance to the Nucleus so that the faithful Children of Atom could shower in irradiated water. For some reason, Sister Mai was utterly unable to walk in and install the pump regulator herself and thought that Sam looked qualified to do so.

Sam walked away with Nick and Longfellow and commented, “They know what they’re getting into, they willingly want to shower in irradiated water, no one’s forcing them to do it… Anyway, this pump regulator is really heavy, and I don’t actually need to be hauling it around.”

“Why’d you pick it up, anyway?” Old Longfellow asks.

Sam shrugged. “It just felt like something that would be useful at some point. And I guess it is.”

Sam peered down at the scummy water and looked over where Mai said the pump regulator had to go. Nick took off his coat, handed it to Sam, and said, “Here. I’ll install it. I know you’re only good with machines in a very specific sense.”

Sam blushed and handed the pump regulator to Nick, who trudged down into the muck, which could give the Ankh competition in the Most Disgusting Body of Water Pageant. Longfellow observed neutrally, “Handy man, your mister.”

“Uhm, he’s not - we’re not married,” stammered Sam. He looked at the ring on his hand and thought about the matching one that he kept in his pocket and how there was no ring on Nick’s hand. “I’m widowed.”

“No?” said Longfellow, as Nick made it over to the spot Mai had indicated and worked on installing the pump. “Not common to get a second chance at a life with someone you love beside you. Wouldn’t waste it, if I was you.”

Nick finished installing the pump regulator, slogged back up to the gantry, and took his coat back from Sam. He commented, “Y’know, I could have gotten that repaired properly. Made the decontamination arches actually decontaminate. But it’s their choice, I suppose.”

Sam hesitated a moment, and then he gave Nick a kiss and said, “Thank you, Nick.”

“Well, you are _very_ welcome, doll,” said Nick, glowing eyes twinkling with amusement.

They returned to Mai, who was delighted that she and her fellow Cultists now had the wonderful option to frolic in irradiated showers. She sold RadX and Radaway for scouring purposes, and Sam bought all that she had.

Sam now felt that he had been very helpful to these strange people, and so he decided to see if he could go big and see what Tektus himself wanted. The High Confessor, who seemed more than a little paranoid, gave him a note and asked him to investigate one of the Children. Sam was good at investigating!

He read the note. Sam _hated_ these kinds of investigations. Nick crossed his arms and looked grumpy as they walked away to go talk to Sister Aubert, whom the High Confessor suspected of treachery. She was a cranky woman, who slipped up a few times, one, in that she indicated that she didn’t think too highly of Tektus, which was probably why he was suspicious of her, and two, in that she was soft on the topic of one ‘Edgar’, of whom Sam had heard rumours. Word had it, Aubert and Edgar had been lovers, and now, there was no Edgar here. Sam got her to ramble on for a bit about the submarine, how they used it as a crypt, and how, despite their hacking efforts, they had been unable to launch the nuke. He thought about the key in his pocket, which would be staying there. No one here was sane enough to handle it.

After talking with Aubert, Sam did what investigators did, at least the hard-working ones, and he went through her things. He found a note in her bunk, which led to a note in a locker that implicated that Aubert believed that Tektus had Edgar killed.

> Edgar,
> 
> Grand Zealot says it was an accident. You wandered off alone and he couldn't get to you in time. Couldn't bring you back...
> 
> He's lying.
> 
> I know because you'd never do something that foolish. None of them will ever admit to it, but this was Tektus. He had you killed cause he's terrified of Martin. Because TEKTUS KNOWS Martin was the only one worthy of running this family.
> 
> Atom above, I need you, Edgar. You'd tell me what to do right now. What keeps coming to mind... I know is a bad idea.
> 
> Until we're together again,
> 
> Aubert 

Religion often demanded sacrifices of its followers. Sometimes, religion demanded its followers as sacrifices. The god Zoth had personally wiped out all of his followers, it was said. In Ankh-Morpork, with the correct paperwork, one could practice the sacrifice of sapient beings who volunteered. The thing was, the religions that were inclined to do that tended to make sacrifice the penalty for failing to volunteer as a sacrifice. Sam had a dim opinion of that practise, and what drove Sam batty was that followers of those religions were allowed to get away with murder, and it emboldened others to try to use religion to do the same. Sorting out what was a legal religious sacrifice and what was a crime he was allowed to investigate was a pain.

DiMA and Longfellow wanted Sam to kill Tektus. Maybe Aubert would agree with that, as well. Sam had watched the Children of Atom execute one of their number, and now there was this note about Edgar. Sam had been ready to see DiMA dead over Captain Avery’s murder, and he’d only relented because it seemed the island required DiMA’s stabilizing political presence to prevent the humans from slaughtering each other and the synths of Acadia.

Maybe Tektus did deserve to die. Sam just didn’t want to do it. The Summoning Dark was strong here in the dimly-lit Nucleus, with shadows draped in every corner. He put its cries for vengeance for Edgar out of his head, and he took the note back to Aubert and quietly suggested that she ought to dispose of it.

She snatched it up and looked ready to eat the note to get rid of it. She murmured, “Oh Atom above, thank you. Thank you. Just, when you report back, tell him I'm loyal, all right? Please.”

“I’m not a snitch,” said Sam firmly. He wouldn’t let Tektus have her killed.

He returned to Tektus, who asked, “Aubert? I'd suspected she might be up to something. Tell me, what did you find?”

“I looked into her, but it seems that Sister Aubert's loyal. Nothing to worry about,” Sam lied. Tektus had Sam to worry about, for one thing.

“Really? Hmm. I must say I'm surprised. Well, you've nonetheless lifted a weight from my shoulders. Here. For your effort. Your service to Atom will not be soon forgotten,” said Tektus, who looked like he was still suspicious, although he gave Sam a strange helmet.

The helmet looked a little like Detritus’s cooling helmet. It didn’t quite fit Sam’s needs, so he put it away in his backpack. At least it wasn’t a gun. Once they were away from Tektus, Nick murmured, “Smooth.”

Perhaps Nick thought so, but Sam’s stomach turned. If it hadn’t been him, if it had been someone else, who’d turned Aubert in…

* * *

Sam next sought out Grand Zealot Brian Richter, who had another bit of nastiness he wanted Sam to solve for him. Richter told him sternly, “There is a woman, one of our own. Or, she was. Gwyneth. But she's given herself over to something... dark. The Confessor ordered Zealot Theil to track her down, but the heretic eluded her. Now Gwyneth has begun profaning our holy sites with her mad ravings, openly flouting the word of Atom. The High Confessor wants her found. And executed.”

What was it about Sam that made people look at him and see Mr. Trooper? He suggested, “We can't try talking to her? Maybe she'll see reason.”

Nick nodded to that, although Richter wasn’t paying attention to the golem.

Richter admitted, “Won't lie. Sister Gwyneth was a good woman. But whatever's driven her to this lunacy... I'm not sure how much it's left behind. Regardless, the High Confessor's decided her abandonment of Atom's too great a sin. The refusal of His grace can't be permitted.”

“I’m sure I can track her down,” said Sam carefully. Track her down and tell her to run, most likely, he thought. She had traded one brand of lunacy for a different brand of lunacy that the first brand of lunacy wanted her killed over. There didn’t seem to be much of a future in that for her.

Longfellow was drunk, as he usually was, half lost in his own world and only half in theirs, but he did slur out, “A dead Child’s a dead Child.” He had his reasons for hating the Children, but nonetheless.

“No dead children on my watch,” Sam said crisply, one hand curling into a fist.

When he found Zealot Theil, another Child was asking her to investigate who was stealing his snack cakes, which she solemnly agreed to do. Sam couldn’t help muttering, “I bet it was Nobby what done it.” Then he raised his voice to normal and commanded, “The Grand Zealot sent me. Tell me what you can about Sister Gwyneth.”

Theil blinked, just now seeing Sam, and she complied, her words tinged with regret, “As I'm sure the Grand Zealot informed you, Gwyneth was once a devoted member of our order. Though prone to strange moods, she was well-liked by many. The Grand Zealot in particular seemed to have a fondness for her… At least until she turned her back on Holy Atom. It was my duty to find her, but Gwyneth was always clever. I am ashamed to admit that I failed.”

Sam had to wonder if a certain amount of intentional failure was happening, here. If so, he would only be continuing a trend. He asked, “What caused Gwyneth to turn her back on Atom?” _What specific flavour of crazy will I be dealing with?_

Theil recounted, “I can only tell you what I saw. She was praying quietly, when she suddenly leapt up and began to shout that Atom is a lie. When Tektus confronted her, she struck him with such force that she knocked him to the ground. When she realized what she'd done, she fled. Tektus wanted to send someone after her, make an example, but at the time it was not his decision. Confessor Martin insisted we wait… hope for her return.”

Sam, because he had apparently rifled through the private affairs of at least 10% of the island, was aware that Martin and Gwyneth had most likely been lovers, which was probably why Martin was willing to let Gwyneth slip.

Theil continued, “Sadly, that never happened, and we gave her up for dead. That was the end of Gwyneth, or so we thought. One of the acolytes spied her at a holy site, but she escaped in the Fog. It was not long after that the blasphemous messages appeared… and we knew it had to be her.”

People were forever conflating cause and effect, correlation and causation, and making assumptions that made donkeys of themselves, but what Sam said was, “I'll find Sister Gwyneth.”

Theil nodded. “Then by Atom's grace, I hope that you will succeed where I did not. You should begin by searching the holy sites. Perhaps you'll find some clue that I missed. Sister Gwyneth's heresy cannot be permitted to continue. May Atom guide you to the heretic. Hopefully you will succeed where I failed. Sister Gwyneth was never violent in the past, but you should still be prepared for anything. I only wish that I knew what drove Sister Gwyneth mad.”

They travelled to a place in the island forest called the Glowing Grove, which was heavily radioactive due to barrels of nuclear waste. In the grove, there were four tables with offerings to Atom, including vases and a blood sack. The shrine had been vandalized with graffiti. Sam found some torn pieces of a banner before Nick did and proceeded to wave it around in front of Nick’s nose smugly.

The Radiant Crest Shrine was slightly less radioactive, but only slightly, because it had fewer barrels of radioactive waste. Sam confiscated some explosives, .45 rounds, and a fusion core that he found in the area, and while he was doing that, Nick found some more banner pieces and waved them in Sam’s face, smirking. Longfellow rolled his eyes at Nick and Sam in exasperation. Putting the pieces together made a banner for Kawaketak Station. Sam looked at the advertisement and said, “Trap?”

“Trap,” Nick agreed.

They went anyway. There was a wolf pack just outside one of the three cabins, which was unfortunate for the wolves. Sam let Longfellow field-dress the wolves, because the old hunter actually knew what he was doing. He was speculating on the possibility of wolf bacon when Nick found a holotape in the cabin.

> It's done. The messages are posted. I-I know it could mean my life, but the Children must know. I was paging through a pre-war tome when I saw it. The atom. A tiny speck of matter surrounded by endless depths. A vast emptiness that dwells within us all. It only reaffirmed what I'd felt all this time. The truth the Confessor wanted no one to hear. The lie that is Atom. It's not real! We aren't all infinite worlds. Just empty space. Dead. Cold. That we are Nothing. Confessor won't be pleased by my messages, but I'm not afraid. I'm going to start moving things to the old church by the west access road, in case... in case they decide to join me. I-I just hope I'm not too late to save them from Atom's lies.

They all listened to the tape, and Nick commented, “That’s… a really odd take on how atoms work.”

“Eh?” said Sam, confused.

“I mean, atoms are a real concept in science. The smallest indivisible unit of an element. Indivisible and yet - we split the atom, and the force released from it is how nuclear bombs work,” explained Nick, and he narrowed his eyes, looking at Sam. “Which, y’know, a pre-war soldier should know, but here we are.”

Sam knew that Nick knew that there was something very wrong with Sam Vimes, pre-war soldier, and that it mainly amounted to the fact that Sam Vimes was not, in his heart of hearts, a soldier, although he’d played that tune12, and he might be pre-war, but he seemed to be pre the wrong war. Luckily, Longfellow broke in with, “Enough of that Atom rubbish.”

Sam took that opportunity to head off to the nearby ruined church. Inside, there was a woman giving a sermon to skeletons. The skeletons did not appear to be Differently Alive skeletons. They were just skeletons. She preached confidently, “The Children of Atom have allowed themselves to be deceived, and I must show them the truth! There is no Atom! There is Nothing! Nothing is endless, Nothing is deathless, and Nothing is without fear or remorse. Who better to understand this than you? You, who have become part of Nothing for eternity, as we must all someday. You have come to know the one real truth of this world. Nothing is the only thing that truly matters. Soon, soon more will come. My messages will reach them. It must! The word will spread and the Children of Atom will come. They will embrace Nothing, as I have, and then, at last, they will understand.”

Sam leaned against the frame of the doorway, and when she seemed like she was at a stopping point, he clapped sarcastically. 

She whirled on him and, furious to be interrupted in what she thought a sacred site, demanded, “Stop! This is a sacred place. Why have you come here? Are you seeking the truth of Nothing?”

Sam unbuckled his bracer, unwrapped the wrappings around his wrist, and moved closer to her, replying, “I’m here to talk about your future. Or lack thereof.” He was trying to think about what was best for her. Being out in wolf-infested woods, preaching to skeletons, with strange new ‘Cultists’ being sent after her, no, there was no future in that. He couldn’t just leave her here. He could probably get her to run. He was good at getting people to run. Was that best, though? She’d spread her brand of lunacy somewhere else, and she might not find an accepting old golem willing to let her live in a Going-Under-The-Water-Safely Device. No, Sam expected that she’d find trappers who would slit her throat and take all that little she had and flense the meat from her bones. “Don’t you miss your old friends? You seemed well-liked.”

Gwyneth looked to the Summoning Dark on Sam’s arm. In the mid-light of the Church, it was difficult to see the red glow, but she still looked both awed and afraid of it. What did the Children see when they looked at the Dark? She admitted, “Of course, I miss them more than anything. I've never been alone before. If I thought there was a chance they might accept me... but I'm a heretic, and my life is forfeit.”

Gwyneth seemed rather desperately sad and alone, and Sam knew she’d been well-liked before she left. If this was Omnianism, Gwyneth causing a schism would have just been a normal day at church. Sam didn’t have much use for Visit’s religion, but these days at least it had acceptance of differing opinions going for it. He whispered lowly, conspiratorial, “What if I could tell you that I happen to know that Tektus’s mind is about to change?”

Gwyneth said with sadness and regret, “How could I have been such a fool? I was a Child of Atom, one of the beloved. I must seek forgiveness from the others. Please tell Richter that I will return soon. I'll accept whatever punishment is deemed just.”

“What is just is everyone learning to accept a little difference of opinion, and I’ll see Richter before you do,” said Sam. “Some things are neither this nor that, you know? Some see the Atom; some see the spaces between, but you’re all looking at the same picture.”

“Are you sure about this?” asked Nick, looking concerned as they headed back toward the Nucleus.

“No. Not at all,” Sam admitted soberly, “but if I told her to run, I’m afraid she’ll end up in the cooking pot of some Trappers, like poor Derrick, or eaten by mirelurks.”

“And you’re more confident in your ability to talk Richter down than in Gwyneth’s ability to live on her own?” Nick pried.

“Yes. I am,” said Sam.

“If those Children want to thin their own numbers -” started Longfellow.

“The Children not caring enough about the lives of their own was the start of your problems,” said Sam, sharply. 

After the slog back to the Nucleus, he found Richter, and he stated, “I found Gwyneth. She will be returning of her own accord, seeking forgiveness.”

Richter looked surprised and mused, “Got through to her, huh? Wasn't sure anyone could. Can't promise the High Confessor won't just kill her on sight. Still... a tale of sin and redemption sets a useful example. You've done well. Proved your devotion and more important, your loyalty. Atom smiles on you today, brother.”

Sam casually let the mark of the Summoning Dark show, and in the Nucleus, it glowed, and he said, “A very useful example. It would let it be known that Atom’s reach is complete, that defiance is futile.”

Richter looked discomfited and simultaneously entranced by the luminous mark. He gave Sam a curt nod and looked like he wanted a way out of this conversation. “Here, take this. It's not just a weapon, it's one of our sacred artifacts. Go forth, and show no mercy to the enemies of Atom.”

Sam was pleasantly surprised that Richter handed him a rather nice sledgehammer and not another one of those infernal firearms that everyone was always foisting on him. He turned Atom’s Judgement over in his hands, smiling like a shark, and he stated, “I’ll see Sister Gwyneth working around the Nucleus.”

It had been a long day, and it was not done yet. Sam turned to Nick and Longfellow, and he said, “If you two would step outside? I need to talk to the High Confessor.”

12 And it sounded like J - I - N - G - O...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **We love comments of all lengths, and understand the need for low-energy commenting like kudos. If you ever find yourself wanting to give us additional kudos, feel free to leave a comment of an icon or emoji of a heart!** <3


	21. Run * The True Story Here * Beloved of Monsters * When You’re Not Around

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter songs: [I Am (a thought in slowmotion)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKsPoZ8YFms&list=PLLEELrwJ-FyotucudE52BnFg6vVn1AGne&index=25) by Project Pitchfork and The True Story Here by Seanan McGuire. Unlike most of our chapter songs, we don’t have a link to stream The True Story Here, but if you hit me up on Discord, I can see about tracking down a copy for you. 
> 
> **We’ve created a Discord server for chatting about Discworld, Fallout, or this fic! Feel free to join us at<https://discord.gg/6QM4Egy>**

_Run * The True Story Here * Beloved of Monsters * When You’re Not Around_

Nick took up a post outside the Nucleus and leaned against the wall, where the glow-light filtered down over his face, making the shadows sharper. Old Longfellow slowly paced around the area, scanning the woods for threats. Sam had left them there while he went to confront Tektus. It would look odd if Sam, who was supposedly a new, beloved Child of Atom, went traipsing around the Nucleus on official secret business for Tektus with a synth and a Far Harbor hunter, wouldn't it? Only, Nick was starting to suspect, it wouldn’t. Nick and Longfellow had wandered through the Nucleus with Sam before, and no one had commented on them. It was almost as if they weren't there. At least Brotherhood of Steel soldiers had reacted to him, even if it was with vitriol. 

Nick lit up a smoke. There were a few likely possible outcomes to Sam dealing with Tektus, but there wasn't one that would make both Nick and Longfellow happy. Longfellow hoped that Sam would put down Tektus like the rabid animal he was; Nick prayed that Sam wouldn't. They both had more than enough blood on their hands. Then there was the option neither of them would like: Sam could set off the wrong person, and the entire Nucleus would come down on him like a ton of bricks. Maybe Nick and Longfellow could rush inside in time to save Sam, if that was the case. 

Maybe they couldn't, and Nick Valentine would add another dead partner to his list. 

After a while, Longfellow spoke, “I hope you two find your boy.”

Nick was visibly startled. 

Longfellow chuckled and admitted, “I overheard Sam talking to you about how, when this business is done, he wanted to get back looking for young Sam.”

Nick straightened his tie. “I, uh, I’m just helping him look.” Sam Vimes was technically his client, although Nick was sleeping with him, and Nick did not belong to the profession where sleeping with one’s clients was an expected duty.

Longfellow said softly, “His wife’s dead, isn’t she?”

Sam had that wedding ring on his hand, where anyone could see it. That was an easy conclusion to draw. Nick thought about the dead woman in Vault 111 and admitted, “Yeah.”

Longfellow nodded. “And Sam’s been dragging you around half the Commonwealth looking for young Sam?”

Anyone who looked at Sam’s mismatched set of armour and clothing could see he’d been all over the place, and Longfellow had admitted to eavesdropping, and it wasn’t even like Nick and Sam were shy about talking in front of Longfellow. Another easy conclusion. Nick hedged, “I wouldn’t call it dragging, you know? I _want_ to help him find young Sam.”

“Seems he’ll be as much your boy as anyone’s, then, if you do find him,” Longfellow speculated.

Nick gave a little strangled laugh and rubbed his chin. He’d talked about needing to add Vimes to his neon sign, hadn’t he? “Uh. I’m a private investigator, you know? I have a secretary, Ellie Perkins. I’ll definitely have to raise her pay if I ask her to babysit…”

But God, he was thinking about it.

“I got my disagreements with you, synthetic man, but a child could do far worse than a father like you,” Longfellow concluded. “You ought to take the chance, if you get it.”

* * *

“I recovered a holotape. Confessor Martin is planning to come back and take over. We should come up with a plan. The Command Center tunnels are far enough away from the rest of the Children,” announced Sam, walking in on High Confessor Tektus as if Sam were exactly where Sam ought to be.

Tektus looked shocked, and there was the slightest squirm of guilt and panic. “Martin? It can't...”

_Why can’t it be, Tektus?_ No one was innocent, but why did everyone on this bloody island have to be so damn guilty?

Tektus steeled himself and directed, “Play it. I want to hear that coward's voice.”

Sam did. It didn’t sound quite natural, but the clip job that DiMA had done in mere seconds was better than anything a con artist in Ankh-Morpork could have managed, even with hours of coaxing the imps.

Tektus went pale, looked around to see if anyone had overheard, and sputtered, “I can't believe it... none of the other Children can know of this. The Command Center, you said? I will... ensure we aren't disturbed...” Then he slunk off to the suggested meeting location. Sam did not follow him immediately. He wandered off, checked in with Ware to see if he had any more brew, made sure that Devin had eaten something, saw to it that Gwyneth was both back and alive - she was, mopping one of the corners of the Nucleus, and she commented gratefully, “If not for you, I’d still be out there, lost and alone,” - and then he finally went to the meeting location.

It was dark, so very dark, in the Command Center tunnels, and Sam could see as clear as day. Tektus was pacing, restless. Sam came up behind him and then lit one of his cigars, cupping it to his face. Tektus startled and then recovered. He said, “Ah, there you are. Now, Martin. Tell me what you found.”

“What I’ve found is that you should run, because one random stranger can easily find out that you had Edgar killed with a minimum of investigation. You should run because you can only maintain your grip on the Children because they fear that you’ll have them executed, and that grip is starting to slip, and once it does, it’s going to be your head that rolls. You should run because your belligerence is what’s getting your missionaries killed,” said Sam, low and soft.

Tektus appeared to not know what to say, taking a few halting steps back. Eventually, he stammered, “I know this wasn't your order. I'll remember that. There is no place beyond his reach on this island, is there? Fine. The... the damned machine will have what it wishes...” and he ran.

Tektus wasn’t wrong in that assumption, but Sam wondered how Tektus had made that leap to concluding that DiMA had put him up to it. Sam was perfectly capable of intimidating religious authorities on his own, without outside interference. He finished his cigar, the shadows surrounding him. After his cigar went out, Sam buckled his bracer back on, hiding the red glow of the mark of the Summoning Dark. He shadowed Tektus for a while, to make sure the High Confessor was truly running.

Then Sam returned to Nick and Longfellow. Nick grabbed Sam and pulled him into an embrace and checked him over, fussing. Sam observed dryly, “I can look after myself, Nick.”

“You could have gotten injured or killed or blown up!” said Nick, who ducked his head down to nuzzle the nape of Sam’s neck.

Longfellow rolled his eyes again and asked, “Well? Took you a long time, but I don’t see a scratch on you that wasn’t there before...”

“Tektus is gone. Draw your own conclusions,” said Sam, shrugging, and Nick pulled away and guiltily looked at Sam’s fingernails, checking them for new blood or torn skin, with a general demeanour of, _It’s not that I don’t trust you, sweetheart, but I don’t trust anyone. Not right now_.

“Hmph. I hope you can live to regret that,” said Longfellow, who correctly interpreted what Nick did not find under Sam’s nails.

* * *

Back at Acadia, Sam heard DiMA talking to the replacement Tektus before he saw them. DiMA said mildly, “It sounds like quite the experience. But I'm glad to know there will be peace on the island again.”

The replacement Tektus, who sounded like a bloody convincing fake, said firmly, “Atom's vision was clear on the matter. I-I must thank you again for sheltering me while under its sway.”

“Think nothing of it. You're welcome to stay as long as you like,” DiMA replied blandly.

“You're too kind, DiMA. I should only need just a little more fresh air,” said the replacement, who nodded to Sam with a murmur of ‘Child’ as he headed out of Acadia.

What was it like, talking to a puppet? Sam wouldn’t have been able to do what DiMA had done in the first place, neither constitutionally nor emotionally, but if he somehow had, he wouldn’t have been able to talk to the replacement with a straight face.

Then DiMA noticed Sam approaching with Nick and Longfellow in tow. He said a little wryly, “I suppose you've heard the news? The High Confessor's had a vision. Atom demands peace. Can I assume you're here to tell me your task is done? Peace can finally come to the island…”

“You’re naive to think peace is here. It’s not a destination where you arrive. Peace is a process. You have to work at it,” said Sam, “but I did my part.”

“Catch and release, though,” said Longfellow, scowling.

DiMA considered Sam’s words thoughtfully and also appeared to catch what Longfellow was implying. “You did... hmm. Perhaps not an ideal resolution, but I suppose the end result is the same.”

Nick asided sourly to Sam and Longfellow, “I'm starting to envy DiMA. This whole situation makes me wish I could erase my memories, too.”

Longfellow, though, said with irritation, “Still think we should have just wiped out the lot of those fanatics, but I guess this'll do.”

“It's a heavy burden, what we've done, but now the Nucleus, Far Harbor, and Acadia will all flourish. Together,” concluded DiMA.

“You're a monster, DiMA. You know that?” growled Sam, who looked more at Nick than DiMA as he said that. _See, I’m not calling him a ‘that’, I’m calling him what he bloody well is._

DiMA took the insult gracefully, inquiring, “I can live with that. Can you?”

“Oh, I do live with it. I live with it every day,” said Sam, who’d always had the Beast, even before the Summoning Dark had set up shop in his head. “Are you going to remember what you’ve done here?”

DiMA crossed his arms, hugging himself, and looked away for a moment. Then he looked guiltily over at Nick, and he said softly, like he was trying to convince himself, “I’ll remember.” He shook himself. “I'll handle things from here. I'll arrange talks between the Children of Atom and Far Harbor. They will learn to prosper together, under our guidance. The Children will revel in their irradiated bastion, the Harbormen will continue to survive and reclaim what the Fog has taken from them… and my people will remain safe.”

“‘Our guidance’. No, as much as you need supervision or maybe a parole officer, I’m wrapping things up here, and I’m finding my son,” snapped Sam.

DiMA looked over at Nick, a shy, faltering hope in his gaze. Nick sighed and said, “I didn’t mention that, did I? We’re looking for Sam’s son. The Institute took him and… say. Do you remember how you got us out of the Institute? I know the Gen 3s, if they escape, there’s a failsafe that wipes their memories of how, and I figured that was why I couldn’t remember how I got out, but finding out it was that you knocked me out cold…”

DiMA considered, and he looked troubled. “I… I can’t remember.” He blinked. “Why can’t I remember?” DiMA trembled slightly and brought his hands to his temples. “What did I do in escaping? Those memories weren’t in the ones you recovered, but even if - even if there was a failsafe to wipe _how_ we escaped, I should at least remember that I can’t remember, and… I can’t. There’s a void.”

“Nothing about a teleporter?” Nick prodded gently.

“No. _No_. There’s just… nothing.” DiMA stared off at the wall, expression bleak, and he asked again, “What did I do?”

Nick walked over to DiMA and touched his arm, and he said, concerned, “Hey. Don’t beat yourself up over it. It’s probably just the same failsafe the Gen 3s have. I’m sorry. I had to ask.”

DiMA was silent a moment, and then he said, “If I remember anything, I will let you know. You’re going with him, then? How should I contact you?”

“Yeah, I’m not leaving a kid in the Institute, and someone has to remind Sam to sleep,” said Nick, “but maybe, when,” not if, “we find him, after everything’s situated, I could come back and check on how you’re doing? Anyway, I dunno how much you can boost your radio signal here with the equipment you have, but I listen in on this frequency,” and he gave a number that was meaningless to Sam, “and I live in Diamond City. I’ve got a pink neon sign. It’s an eyesore, but you can’t miss it.”

DiMA said soberly, “I suspect it would be a good thing if you came and checked on me.” Would DiMA really remember, if not for the threat of Nick Valentine dropping in on him again to keep him honest? He looked to Sam and said, “My best wishes to you in recovering your son. I’m sorry, I don’t have anything for Nick - I have consumed the local supply of components backwards-compatible with Gen 2 synths - but perhaps this may be of use to you.”

He held out a piece of armour to Sam, who took it. It was a decent enough piece of armour, and it wasn’t a gun. He tucked it away.

DiMA suggested, “You might see how Tektus is doing in the Nucleus after his vision.”

“I suppose I might,” Sam granted.

He did. The new Tektus was talking about peace with Far Harbor, albeit in a nutty cult preacher way. He gave Sam a piece of armour, a left pauldron, which was better than the one Sam currently had, and so he slipped it on, despite the clear cult markings all over it.

That just left Kasumi to deal with, but Faraday had been nagging at Sam. Faraday was about as sketchy as his beau, and if Sam didn’t have anything hard that he could nail on Faraday, he felt that it was only because he hadn’t been looking, because everyone else was so blatantly sketchy that he just tripped over the skeletons in their closets without any effort on his own part.

As Sam was headed down to talk to Kasumi, he overhead Cog say, “Later on today, you wanna see if Faraday's up for switching our brains? I could be you, you could be me... It'd be fun.”

“Oh, fuck off Cog. You know I'm not doin' that,” growled Jule, and she flounced off. 

Brain switching? Sam wasn’t sure if even Igors would do that for _fun._ The society that these golems had built by themselves, for themselves, was a very strange one, a contrast to how the Railroad had them forget what they even were with the goal of saving them.

Cog sighted Sam, and he pulled him aside, explaining that he wanted Sam to go talk to Jule with him. Jule was openly hostile to the general concept, but Cog wanted Sam to re-examine the boat that Faraday had sent him to previously. As Sam, Nick, and Longfellow walked off to the boat, Sam deadpanned, “Oh. Wow. Like clockwork. And here’s whatever it is that’s sketchy about Faraday because the gods forbid that anyone be a normal person on this island. Present company excepted, Longfellow.”

“Aster is a nice person!” Nick protested.

The group investigated the crashed boat. They found out that Jule had once been a synth named Victoria who had taken an ill-fated boat trip and had nearly died, so Faraday had, in the process of repairing her, wiped her mind and started her over. The biggest issues were, first, that Faraday hadn’t checked with Victoria beforehand about what she would want done in that sort of situation and so the emergency mind-wipe had been done without her consent, and second, that Jule didn’t know what had happened and was having nightmares and mood swings. 

As the three headed back to Acadia, Nick pointed out, “This doesn’t even make sense. Even if Faraday gave her a new face to go with being Jule now, you think people would notice that Victoria was gone and that there was this new Jule person here. Yet Cog is acting like he doesn’t know what happened, and nobody knows what happened. How does no one notice something like that!?”

Once they had returned to Acadia and questioned Faraday, he admitted to wiping Victoria without her consent to save her life after the boating accident. He seemed… appropriately guilty, if that could be said of what he had done. He admitted to second-guessing his choice every day. He pleaded that he’d wanted better for Victoria, but that he didn’t have Institute level technology. The thing that caught the attention of both Sam and Nick was that Faraday said ‘we’. “We had the chance to save her life, and we took it. Did whatever we had to. And I constantly second-guess that decision.”

“Sure, sure, buddy,” said Nick, in a decidedly not-buddy tone, “but who is this ‘we’?”

Faraday didn’t have anything to say about that.

Nick sighed and walked away from Faraday, complaining, “God, why couldn’t we do better? A community of synths, by synths, for synths, and we just go and find new ways of messing it all up! On top of all the old ways of going wrong that humans already knew...”

Nick stalked back to DiMA and demanded sternly, “DiMA, what the hell is the deal with Victoria and Jule? You can’t tell me you don’t know. If you tell me you don’t know, I’m going to go looking for more holo-tapes if I have to dig up the entire island.”

DiMA seemed to need to think about that, and he said softly, “Victoria had a boating accident. She was fatally injured. She could not consent for herself. In that situation of medical ethics, the practitioner must judge what the patient would have wanted. Faraday thought that Victoria would have wanted to live on in a fashion. Perhaps he was wrong. At this point, no one can say. Victoria is no longer here with us to ask.”

That was the story they’d been hearing. It was at least consistent. More, DiMA didn’t know they’d just talked to Faraday about the same thing, so it was probably the actual story. Nick continued, “Well okay. But Faraday said ‘ _we_ ’, ‘We had the chance to save her life, and we took it. Did whatever we had to,’ and you’re the only other chucklehead around here who gets up to this kind of shit, unless I totally missed another jackass when I chatted up everyone here.”

DiMA said mildly, “Faraday checked in with me on the medical ethics of the situation. Ideally, one would have two practitioners not involved in the case both agree that the procedure is medically necessary and emergent, failing the patient having any loved ones available to provide procedural consent. As it played out, the situation was… not ideal.” He grimaced.

“‘Not ideal.’ Uh huh,” repeated Nick.

“You are… disappointed in me,” DiMA observed, and he looked perturbed. People didn’t like disappointing Nick Valentine, Sam had noticed.

“Yeah. Yeah, I am,” agreed Nick, who was still fuming. “So. Explain this part. Why in God’s name does no one else know what’s going on with Jule? Did no one notice that Victoria was gone and suddenly Jule was here?”

DiMA paused, and then he said more to himself than anything, “...that memory access lag is unusual; I’ll have to have Faraday recheck relay circuit #42 for me…” Then, to the others, he explained, “Synths come to and go from Acadia freely, and those who venture beyond the defense perimeter may come to unfortunate ends. Victoria died. Jule arrived.” 

“And no one questioned this!?” Nick demanded.

“Well. You are,” DiMA said mildly.

Sam patted Nick’s forearm and said, “C’mon, let’s go back and talk to Cog and Jule.”

“Why is everyone so naive?” Nick bemoaned.

“And now you see where I’m coming from,” Sam muttered.

“And why I’m drunk,” added Longfellow. “Makes it all so much easier.”

“Nick, ah… to avoid future such situations, I will ask that synths file advanced medical directives with regards to their wishes in the case of an emergency upon arriving at Acadia?” DiMA offered, sounding cautiously hopeful.

“Yeah. Great,” Nick said glumly as Sam led him away. 

The three talked to Cog, who insisted that telling Jule that she’d been Victoria and that Faraday had botched her mindwipe would only make matters worse, which was what Faraday had also suggested, in other words.

But Sam Vimes was an honest man, even if he sometimes lied, and he reasoned there was no way that Jule could make any informed decisions going forward if she wasn’t informed about her past. So he told her why she had nightmares and mood swings. He told her what Faraday had done. She didn’t take it well, storming off, perhaps for good, as she gave Sam the key to her locker.

“She deserved to know,” Nick said soberly, agreeing with Sam’s choice, and Longfellow nodded.

“Right,” said Sam, who was not quite so sure. “Now let’s go talk to Kasumi before we uncover any more conspiracies.”

They did. The young woman, having been given the time to think matters over, had concluded that she probably wasn’t a synth and that she ought to go back to her parents, who missed her terribly.

Nick asided to Sam, “Y’know, today? I don’t think I’d want to be a synth, either, given the option…”

“Oh come on, now, Nick,” said Sam, “Someone has to do it right.” 

The synths needed their own stainless man, even if he was slightly rumpled and tattered, and that man certainly wasn’t DiMA, however much he wanted to be a role model.

Nick gave DiMA one last goodbye that was more parole officer to convict than brother to brother. Longfellow bid them farewell and returned to his cabin. He wished Sam well on finding his son, although he looked at both Sam and Nick as he said it. Sam, Nick, and Kasumi got on the boat, toting along that complete Vim! set of Power Armour they’d found in the Vim! factory. Sam would need it for the Glowing Sea.

* * *

DiMA tried to run the concept of advanced directives by Chase, because he valued the Courser’s insight, and he found himself unable to. She had nothing to say on the matter. Then he tried to talk to Faraday, and his beloved was similarly silent. It was the same of everyone in Acadia, and DiMA wondered if he had well and truly gone insane, if he was hallucinating, because the alternative was that no one in all of Acadia was functioning normally, and DiMA would have given anything for it just to be him, for everyone else to be fine. Could it be an Institute virus, finally coming to fruition, that he was just too old to be affected by?

It seemed as if a fog was settling over Acadia, not a fog of radiation, but a fog of the mind. DiMA found it harder and harder to think, as if he was drowning. Nick had already pointed out how odd it was that no one had noticed that Victoria had been replaced by Jule, though, and that thought gnawed at DiMA’s mind. Shouldn’t Chase have noticed? Coursers were trained to be perceptive.

Why couldn’t he remember anything about getting Nick out of the Institute, aside from their fight, where, lacking any better ideas, he’d left his brother in the trash? DiMA stalked over to one of Acadia’s terminals and started to script out a simulation to test a rather horrid theory, as it dawned on him that he had no idea what he’d been doing last week, before Sam Vimes and Nick Valentine had arrived and turned the island upside down. He had no idea what he’d been doing the year before. Aside from a few points of light, a handful of scattered memories, DiMA was missing his entire life.

It didn’t make any sense, and so DiMA, as a philosopher, had to ask: was he real? Was anyone? The simulation he was scripting out just might be able to answer that question. The world seemed to blur around him, but he heard footsteps, and he felt the cold muzzle of a rifle at the back of his head. Despite feeling on the verge of utter hysteria, DiMA asked calmly, “As one old man to another, might I turn around to look my death in the eyes?”

“I suppose I can grant you that, machine,” growled Longfellow.

DiMA turned around slowly, drawing his plasma pistol behind him as the world went white and ceased to exist.

* * *

The boat ride contained no sea monsters or rains of tinned sardines. Kasumi went along and returned to her parents. They told them that they didn’t need a reward and left Mr. Nakano’s collection where he had buried it. Sam observed that Mr. Nakano was a bit smothering, to put it mildly, but the man promised to allow his young lady a bit more freedom, which seemed to please Mrs. Nakano. Sam could understand smothering. Once he found young Sam again, Sam was never going to let him out of his sight again.

Unless.

Unless his young Sam was no longer his young Sam. Unless the Institute had turned his young Sam into a monster like DiMA. Then Sam didn’t know what he would do, and he was a monster himself for not knowing what he would do.

Nick settled down on a bench outside the Nakano family house, and he lit up a cigarette. Sam glumly sat down beside him and lit one of his cigars. Nick blew out a cloud of smoke and said, “I'm glad things ended as well as they have. The Nakanos are a happy family again, as much as anyone around here can be, anyway.”

Sam played with his cigar and asked obliquely, “You and DiMA. You seem to think there’s something...” Sam caught himself and corrected, “... _someone_ worth… saving?”

Nick looked at Sam sideways and sighed. “He can’t be punished without serious knock on consequences, so yeah. I may as well want him to be better.”

Maybe DiMA actually would be better. Sam Vimes, who'd had to deal with the Beast long before the Summoning Dark had ever set up shop in his head, thought to himself, _Nick Valentine is beloved of monsters, because he sees us as people, and when he sees us, we want to be the people he sees us as._

Sam thought about young Sam and what the Institute might have made of him. He said gingerly, “I hope, Nick, that I’ll be able to handle whatever has happened with young Sam as well as you’re handling DiMA.”

But he didn’t think he would, if it came to that.

They made their way south for a Railroad check-in.

* * *

Once Sam Vimes and Nick Valentine returned to the mainland, the plan was to make their way from the Nakano residence to the Red Rocket where Sam kept his older Power Armor, now that the two were pretty sure they had gathered enough fusion cores to make the journey into the Glowing Sea. Of course, since the Nakano residence and the Red Rocket were on close to opposite sides of the Commonwealth, it made sense to make a few stops along the way. The first stop was the Railroad Headquarters, where they figured they'd let Brooks know they had a place outside the Commonwealth where they could send synths - without wiping their minds first.

Sam and Nick were just finishing up their report when Deacon stormed up behind them. "What the hell did you do to me?!" he demanded of Nick.

Nick smirked and answered a bit smuggly, "Me? All I did was suggest you start paying attention to what was going on around you. Which, as I seem to recall you mentioning at the time, is your job, anyway."

Sam looked between the two, confused. He frowned and narrowed his eyes, "Did I miss something?"

Nick shook his head and gestured to an unoccupied desk in the corner, the same one he and Deacon had had their previous conversation around. "Not really. After what happened with P.A.M., I just suggested that Deacon pay more attention to what was going on around him."

"Right," Sam said, throwing himself into the seat. "Because he noticed what happened, and not everyone seems to."

"Yeah well, that's not all I've been noticing," Deacon hissed. He gestured around the rest of the Railroad headquarters. "What's wrong with them? They act like they're running on some sort of script! They can't... they can't all be Institute synths, can they? Except a synth wouldn't act like that, either, not even one with a botched mindwipe!"

Nick leaned against the corner of the desk and admitted, "Like I said last time, Deacon, I didn't know what's going on, and I still don't. Whatever this is, it seems to go way beyond the Institute, but so far I got more questions than I do answers. I was hoping having someone else around who knew what to look for might help..."

Deacon rubbed his temples. "I didn't know whether I was going crazy, or everyone else was. First one's more believable, if I'm gonna level with you, but knowing that it's not just me makes that one a bit harder to swallow." He barked a bitter laugh. "Maybe we're just all going nuts together."

"Still haven't figured out the baseline for 'sane' around here to begin with," Sam grumbled.

Nick gave Sam a wry smirk, then turned a more concerned expression on Deacon. "Deacon, you think you gonna be okay?"

Deacon chuckled, but he shook his head. "Not any time soon, but I'm functional enough to have your backs in a fight, because you're _not_ leaving me behind this time."

Sam and Nick exchanged glances and Sam shook his head. "Not just yet, Deacon."

"Yes just yet, Whispers," Deacon replied. "You don't get it! While you were gone, it's like... nothing happened."

"That's... good, isn't it?" asked Sam. "Well. Better than a lot of somethings, anyway."

"No. I mean... it almost feels like I wasn't there. We had our routine, we followed it, but... nothing's clear. Like when you got back here, something came in and backfilled the memories, and let me tell you, whatever it was didn't bother to make them nearly as interesting as I would! Until I figure out what's going on, you two are staying in my sight!"

The other two had been listening intently to the spy, but at the last statement, Nick and Sam exchanged a quick glance, Sam's eyes wide with panic. Deacon coughed as he remembered something. "Well okay, maybe not quite literally. God knows, wouldn't want to get in the way of any... ‘recreational downtime’ you manage to find time for. But I am sticking close."

Sam covered his face tiredly with his hand. Not an unusual gesture for him, but at the moment he was likely doing it to cover the blush building on his face. Nick cleared his throat and then clarified, "That's, erm, considerate of you, but that's not the problem. Our next trip out once we've picked up Sam's old Power Armor is the Glowing Sea, and while that's our spare frame, we don't have another full suit. You'd be left unprotected."

Deacon considered this. "Oh. Oh, yeah, you're looking for that Institute scientist, right?"

Despite having his face still hidden behind his hand, Sam managed a nod of agreement. "It's already been too long. We've just about gathered enough fusion cores to make the trip, even with two suits, but like Nick said, we don't have two complete ones."

The spy shifted his weight as he thought about it. "Yeah, all right, maybe I shouldn't tag along for that one... but as soon as you two get back... as _soon_ as you're back, I'm on deck with you two, got it?" He looked around nervously. "This place gets a little eerie when you're not around."

* * *

Sam and Nick picked up Sam's spare power armor, which Nick wore for spare parts while Sam wore the Vim! armor, and they picked up Codsworth, who should have been okay for the trip, while they were in the area. Then the three of them headed south. They decided to camp one last time before entering the high radiation zone, so that Sam could face the dangers of the area as fully rested as he got. There wasn’t a convenient campsite in the area and the weather was decent, so Sam just did his best with any clothes, pillows, and anything else remotely soft he happened to have in his pack.

Come to think of it, Sam was the only person Nick had ever seen who managed to sleep without a conveniently located bed, mattress, or even sleeping bag that happened to already be in the area. 

Given the circumstances, the lack of proper shelter, and Codsworth’s presence, it was just sleep, with none of what Deacon had termed ‘recreational downtime’. They also didn’t bother waiting for dark. Sam seemed to sleep at least as well during the day as he did at night, and his night vision was far better than any human’s night vision had a right to be. Given that most of the dangerous fauna of the area seemed just as dangerous by day as at night, there really was no reason to stick with the traditional day/night cycle where it wasn’t convenient.

Of course, neither Nick nor Codsworth actually needed sleep, so they stood watch during the day as Sam rested. Nick counted this as fortunate, because he had a few questions for Codsworth that he’d been hoping to ask, questions that would work better if Sam himself hadn’t been listening in.

“So… Codsworth, you belonged to the family before the war began, didn’t you?” ‘Belonged to the family’ was a useful phrase. It left it vague whether Codsworth was a member or property.

“Oh, yes! That’s correct, Mister Valentine! And a lovely family they were to belong to, loving, generous, considerate…”

“Right. So… what was he like in those days, anyway? Sam, I mean?”

Codsworth lowered a bit, and his oversized optics tilted to the right as he considered. “Ah! He was a decent man, a combat veteran, an upstanding member of his community, always ready to lend a hand to help out his neighbors… I felt very fortunate to be able to serve one such as he and his family! Only…”

“Only?” Nick encouraged.

“Well, that’s the thing, sir. Before the Vault, Master Sam was a good person, one whom I was very proud to be associated with. Since emerging from the Vault, he remains a good person, and I continue to be proud to that he still counts on me for assistance, but… the resemblance ends there. Physically, of course, he is the same, but his personality is completely different. While he remembers the dear, departed Sybil and, of course, young Sam, I feel quite certain that at first he did not recognize me at all. He does not appear to recall his time in the military, nor his wife’s career, but instead seems to suffer some… delusions concerning what life had been like before the Vault. For example, he once mentioned Sybil having bred ‘swamp dragons’, a creature which, to my knowledge, does not exist!”

Nick rubbed his chin, thinking this over. It matched with everything else he had observed: all the machines that seemed to recognize Sam as something he wasn’t, all the records that didn’t line up… “It’s like something changed while he was in the Vault…” Nick murmured.

“Yes, sir. I admit, I have begun to wonder if perhaps the Vault’s experiments went beyond just the cryostasis pods. I shudder to think, but perhaps some sort of… psychological testing was done on him, as well?”

“Maybe,” Nick allowed. “That’s been the best theory I could come up with, but… there’s nothing about it in the Vault’s records. No hint of the sort of technology that would take, and based on the logs, the staff were all too busy dealing with their own problems to run that sort of experiment.” He shook his head. “It’s not that we’re missing too many pieces, it’s that we’ve got ones that don’t fit together. It’s like someone took parts of two or three different but similar puzzles and just… jumbled them all together. I suppose it’s possible that any… second experiment’s records were deleted or lost, but…”

Codsworth floated gently near the synth, falling into a contemplative silence for a few moments before he added, cautiously, “There’s… well, there’s something else, I should probably mention, Mister Valentine.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“Well, you see, sir… while Master Sam’s personality and even memories after the Vault seem completely different from before he went in… I… didn’t actually notice the differences until… well, until this very trip. It’s not that the issues weren’t there. When I review my memories, it is, in fact, very clear. But for whatever reason, I just… was unable to put it all together until very recently, and I’m afraid I do not understand what changed in _me.”_

The synth studied the other robot for a long moment, then finally nodded. “Yeah, I… kinda get what you mean.” But he didn’t elaborate. Nick occasionally tried to puzzle out what was wrong with Sam Vimes, why he never quite seemed to fit in the world in which they walked. But more and more, he was plagued by the terrifying suspicion that maybe, just maybe, the problem wasn’t with Sam Vimes, but with the world itself.

* * *

__

> _“The Glowing Sea is the most highly irradiated region in the entire Commonwealth. According to local legend, it was ground zero for the high-yield nuclear blast that devastated most of Massachusetts.”_

Sam was headed southwest, following an unmaintained road in the Glowing Sea, as he clanked along in his Vim! Power Armour. Nick was wearing the rest of his secondary set of Power Armor, because that was logistically the most sensible way of transporting the second set as spare parts should Sam’s primary set break down. The blasted landscape was surreal and offered little cover. Finally, Codsworth was with them. All of these things made sneaking difficult.

Every radscorpion, feral ghoul, and deathclaw in the area wanted a piece of Sam, and all he wanted to do was run, and the bloody Power Armor made him so slow. The two mercies were, firstly, that the Power Armor greatly increased his strength, making his sledgehammer blows decisive even against deathclaws and, secondly, that no one could see his pants when he was in the Power Armor.

Landslides and sinkholes also threatened them, Nature’s boobytraps. She was a more than able craftswoman, Sam thought grimly, as he and Codsworth worked on unburying Nick, who had been just a little too slow to dive out of the way. At least Nick didn’t need to breathe. If that had been Sam, he might well have hyperventilated himself to death by now. Sam and Codsworth hauled Nick out of the rubble pile, and they continued on.

Eventually, the Pip-Boy told Sam that they had to leave the road. Hours passed, and they came upon a Crater that made his Pip-Boy positively scream. An even-toned woman’s voice demanded, “Stop right there, stranger. You approach Atom's holy ground. Why? State your purpose, or be divided in his sight.”

In the bright but dust-diffracted light, Sam spotted a woman dressed in simple, dirty clothing. She lacked the heavy tattooing he associated with the Far Harbor Children of Atom, but Sam knew the words. The Power Armour hid the left pauldron etched with the marks of the Children of Atom, which Sam still wore, because he hadn’t found a better pauldron and he was a practical man, and it also hid the mark of the Summoning Dark on his wrist. Nonetheless, drinking bloody drugged radioactive water had to be worth something, and Sam tried, “Would you be willing to help a fellow Child of Atom? I'm part of a church in a place called the Nucleus, near the town of Far Harbor. You know it?”

The woman looked skeptical, as if she were unsure if she believed the stranger in the red Vim! Power Armour, which gave her credit in Sam’s eyes. People _should_ be suspicious of him, a strange, rough devil. There was a lengthy pause as if she was carefully assembling her sentences, and then she said, “Far Harbor? Few know of the land shrouded beneath Atom's veil, let alone claim to have worshiped within its sacred fog. An interesting assertion... if it's true. Perhaps we can help you.”

There was another one in the book for simply pretending he was supposed to be there. Sam said brightly, “I'm looking for someone named Virgil. Have you seen him?”

“Virgil? Yes... We know this Virgil,” she said suspiciously, “What do you want with him?”

“I want the Institute,” said Sam flattly, “and I think I can get it through him.” 

The cultist seemed to see that Sam had nothing good in mind for the Institute, and she appeared to approve, smiling grimly. “I have heard of this Institute. They hide themselves, trying to avoid the power of Atom. A futile effort. In truth, this Virgil has caused some concern. Some believe his presence is an affront to Atom. Though he came to trade with us on a few occasions, we have had little other contact with him. It was quite clear he wanted to be left alone. You can find him southwest of the crater, living in a cave. I would approach cautiously, were I you. I feel he does not want visitors.”

“If he doesn’t want visitors, then he had better tell me what I want to know, because I’m not leaving without it,” said Sam.

There was another careful pause, and then her unpleasant grin widened. “Truly? Hmm. Perhaps you _have_ been sent to us by Atom…”

“Stranger things have happened,” admitted Sam, and he fiddled with his Pip-Boy, comparing her instructions with his map, and he set off.

Out of her earshot, Nick said, “That shouldn’t have worked, y’know?”

“Nine times out of ten, one in a million chances happen,” said Sam absently.

Nick, whose incomplete set of Power Armor did not have a helmet, frowned. “That’s not how statistics work, doll.”

Sam, with the wisdom of the ignorant, corrected gently, “That’s absolutely how statistics work.”

Codsworth, sounding concerned, asked, “Oh, uhm, Master Sam? I didn’t want to interrupt Sir’s negotiations, but if Sir is a Child of Atom, will Sir be requiring any special religious considerations?”

Sam broke out laughing, and when he had finally recovered, he said, “No, Codsworth, I will not.”

After a few more fights with hellbent wildlife, they found Virgil’s cave, which contained, instead, a golem and turrets, which were not hellbent. Then they found Virgil, who was a super mutant, and Sam felt that the Child of Atom with whom he’d spoken really should have mentioned that, just like Ellie really should have told him that Nick Valentine was a golem. These people provided such wretched personnel descriptions!

Codsworth commented sarcastically, “A super mutant. One of the green brotherhood. How splendid.”

“Hold it! Take it nice and slow, no sudden moves... I know you're from the Institute, so where's Kellogg? Huh? Trying to sneak up on me while you distract me? It's not going to work!” demanded the super mutant, both belligerent and paranoid, albeit unusually eloquent for a super mutant. “I'm not stupid, I knew they'd send him after me!”

“Gods. No,” said Sam, at the accusation that he was from the Institute, his face like stone.

“Don’t suppose you’d be Virgil?” asked Nick Valentine, which was a fair question. Hells, maybe the super mutant had eaten Virgil. Who knew?

“You know damn well I am. What're you doing here?” growled Virgil.

“I need to know how you got out of the Institute because I need to get in,” said Sam, laying it out plain.

“So, they did send you, didn't they. You're working with Kellogg!” accused Virgil.

“No. He’s dead,” said Sam flatly. 

Virgil looked at Sam with wary, jaded hope. “Dead? He's... dead? Don't you lie to me!”

“He’s dead,” Sam repeated.

“If you're telling the truth, then you must understand my skepticism. Kellogg was ruthless... There's a reason the Institute used him to do their dirty work for so many years. I knew they'd send him after me; tried to prepare for it. But I still wasn't sure I'd make it…” Virgil paused, hesitantly, and he must have seen it in Sam’s bearing, as the truth dawned upon him. “And so you. You killed him, eh? Then what do you want with me?”

Sam flinched and looked away. Then he forced himself to look back, and he said, “I want. The Institute.”

“What makes you think I know anything about the Institute?” said Virgil, backing away from the bantamweight human.

Besides the fact that the first thing out of Virgil’s mouth had been about the Institute? Sam snapped. “Because I plugged Kellogg’s dead brain into him,” and he pointed angrily at Nick, “and rummaged through Kellogg’s memories like I was going through his trash, and you were in those memories as a mark that the Institute wanted Kellogg to kill! I know you’re a rogue Institute scientist, and unlike an escaped synth, you had better remember how it was that you teleported out, because I need to get into the Institute.”

Virgil looked fascinatingly horrified. Eventually, he calmed enough to offer a deal. “If I help you, you're going to do something for me. Before I was forced to leave, I was working on a serum to reverse this mutation. It could return me to normal. You understand? So if you get in there, I need you to find it in my old office, and bring it to me. I think that's pretty reasonable, in exchange for helping you.” He shook himself a bit. “All right. Let's talk details. First thing's first. You know how synths get in and out of the Institute?”

Sam shot what was, under his helmet, a wry look at Nick. “Why yes. I’m given to understand they teleport.” Hadn’t he just mentioned that? 

“Well, well... Not many know about it. Pretty closely guarded secret. You've certainly done your homework. It's commonly referred to as the ‘Molecular Relay.’ I don't understand all the science behind it, but it works. De-materializes you in one place, re-materializes you in another. I'm sure it sounds crazy, but it's a reality. The Relay is the only way in and out of the Institute. You understand? The only one,” said Virgil, deliberate and deadly serious. “That means you're going to have to use it. Now, have you ever seen an Institute Courser?”

“Ye-es?” said Sam. He’d met Chase. Nick had flirted with her and then abruptly become rather frightened by her once he’d realized she was an Institute Courser.

Virgil snapped, “Don't bullshit me. More than one of them, and you wouldn't be standing here right now. Coursers are Institute synths, designed for one purpose. They're hunters. Operations go wrong, a synth goes missing, and a Courser is dispatched. They're very good at what they do, and you're going to have to kill one.”

“But…. Sam didn’t say he’d seen more than one,” Nick observed and then added wistfully, “What a dame. No good at barricades, though.”

“Kill one? Can’t I just bribe one instead?” Sam asked wearily. He did not, would not take bribes, himself, and Nick was gratifyingly similar in his predilections, but bribing other people was absolutely an effective way of getting things out of them.

Virgil’s expression seemed to suggest that he thought Sam was very, very dim for even thinking about bribing a Courser. “If there were another way, I'd suggest it. Believe me. Every Courser has special hardware that gives them a direct connection to the Relay in the Institute. It's embedded in a chip in their heads. You need that chip. But to get it, you'll have to find a Courser. Now I don't know exactly where you can find one. They haven't sent any after me, and sitting here waiting doesn't seem like a good plan. You're going to have to hunt one down. I can tell you where to start, and give you some help finding one, but you'll have to do the dirty work.”

“Embedded in a chip in their heads?” Sam said innocently, turning to look sideways at Nick.

“Jackass,” Nick replied, with good-natured irritation.

Virgil seemed to not know what to do about the two strangers in his home who were currently verbally poking at each other over an in-joke he didn’t know, so he just said awkwardly, “Right. The primary insertion point for Coursers is in the ruins of CIT, directly above the Institute. So you'll want to head there. Now, the Relay causes some pretty heavy interference all across the EM spectrum. You've got a radio on that Pip-Boy, right? When you get to the ruins, tune it to the lower end of the band and listen in. You'll be able to hear the interference. Follow the signal, and it'll lead you to a Courser. Then you just have to... not get killed. Not gonna lie; the odds aren't in your favor here. But if you do make it, remember what I said about the serum. I need it, badly. I... I really do hope you find what you're looking for.”

“I’m good at finding things, and I strongly suspect Nick may be better,” said Sam flattly, and he turned to head off back into the blasted, warped landscape of the Glowing Sea.

* * *

They dropped off the sets of Power Armor at the Red Rocket truck stop, Sam dismissed Codsworth to return to Sanctuary to continue to govern it, and then Nick and Sam stopped by Diamond City to grab Piper, despite Sam’s reservations, because there was no way that Nick wanted to leave his friend Piper behind if they were going to try to gank an Institute Courser.

“Why not?” said Sam, as they entered in through the gates. “She left you behind.”

“Eh?” asked Nick, confused.

Sam, who still had his sword, even if he favored the hammer these days, flipped the sword up into the air and caught it. “Nick. You were gone for weeks. Your secretary was willing to send a random stranger in out of the rain off to find you. And Piper, the so-called investigative reporter, never bothered to look for her good friend Nick Valentine?”

“I do wander off my own for extended periods,” Nick excused, and his glowing eyes looked hurt.

“I have no doubt that you do, but does it upset Ellie that much every time?” asked Sam.

“I mean, I couldn’t expect Piper to take on that kind of danger just for ol’ me,” Nick said weakly.

“Mhm. But you think she’s up for hunting down an Institute Courser? And don’t lie, Nick, I’ve seen the fear in your eyes over Coursers,” continued Sam.

“I… I mean, snooping up the Institute’s tailfeathers is what Piper does. She’ll never forgive me if I don’t give her a shot at this,” said Nick, crossing his arms and looking down and away.

“Muckraking and fearmongering is what Piper does,” corrected Sam. “I like the truth. I don’t like public hysteria.”

They turned and came into the market square, where one man was holding someone who looked fairly similar to him at gunpoint. There was a Diamond City security officer on the scene. The man held at gunpoint pleaded, terrified, “I’m not a synth! Kyle. I’m your brother! Put the gun down!”

“Don't move, synth! What have you done with the real Riley? Where's my brother?” shouted Kyle, keeping the gun trained on Riley.

Riley begged, “I swear. I'm not a Synth! Don't shoot! For God sakes, we're family!”

“Put the gun down! Now!” barked a guard.

“He's a synth! He'll kill us all!” ranted Kyle.

Sam was too slow to do anything about it. The guard pulled the trigger. Kyle dropped. Sam checked on the body and found it to be indeed, a body. Guns killed so quickly. Shoot a man with a crossbow, and he might drop and still be alive. He complained bitterly, “Has no one heard of talking a man down?”

He’d been good at that, once. Open the Watch House doors. Put the weapons away. Have plenty of witnesses about to make sure the public knew any prisoners were not being mistreated.

Nick checked on Riley, who was clearly shaken, but Sam went up in the baseball helmeted face of the guard and demanded, “What in the bloody hells was that?” and he gestured widely at the dead man and his horrified brother.

The guard said sternly, “What, you didn't hear the shouting? Guy pulls a gun on his own brother, thinking he's a synth. It's that newspaper's fault. Got people all riled up, thinking their own family might be replaced by machines. Look, I'm sorry you got caught up in all this, but it's over, okay? Just go about your business like nothing happened. Better that way.”

“Hey there, Riley. I know this is a tough moment. You’ll make it through,” Nick reassured.

Riley said softly, hard to hear, as he held back tears, “I'm... I'm not a synth. I told him. I kept telling him. Why didn't he listen to me? I... I need a minute...”

Then a second guard shouted to the crowd of people gathered in the market, “Okay, show's over! There are no synths in Diamond City, hear me? Just you folks and your damn paranoia!”

Sam looked incredulously from the guard to Nick Valentine, who was a long-time and beloved resident of Diamond City. A beloved resident that absolutely no one had bothered to rescue when he’d been gone for weeks and his secretary was worried sick about him. Golems were useful when they were useful, and people liked to have them around then, but people would just as soon forget they even existed otherwise, and the heavens forbid that anyone raise a finger to help one in need. He advanced on the guard and demanded, “How can you say that with Nick Valentine standing right there!? No synths but your one ‘good’ synth, and he’s only a synth when that’s convenient for you! When you want to forget that he’s a person, too?”

“Sam,” Nick said quietly, “Please don’t make a scene.”

“A scene had been made,” snarled Sam, gesturing wildly at the macabre tableau. “I’m just making a point.”

“And it’s about me, and I’m asking you to stop,” said Nick, reaching out to grasp Sam’s flailing hand with his metal one.

“I - because you insist. Only because you insist,” said Sam, locking eyes with Nick.

“Got our eyes on you. Even if you are pallin' around with Nick Valentine,” threatened the guard.

Nick’s grip tightened, and he tugged Sam off towards _Publick Occurrences_. Sam could not help but ask, “Why do you let them treat you this way?”

“Because it’s a damn sight better than being dead on the ground like Kyle wanted to make poor Riley, and in case you didn’t notice, that’s the alternative! Sam, you want better for me, you want better for all synths, and… you can’t get that by shouting at people,” Nick said, angry at first and deflated at the end.

They turned a corner, and at _Publick Occurrences_ , there was little paper girl Nat shouting, “Read all about it! Are synths replacing people? Is your neighbor really human? Read all about it!”

Nick lowered his head slightly and touched the bridge of his nose. He said preemptively, “She’s a little girl.”

“Oh yes. And children repeat what they’ve heard from adults,” replied Sam.

They found Piper inside _Publick Occurrences_. She was, apparently, up for coming along. Sam wouldn’t trust her with his back in fight, not as things stood, but Nick wanted her along. Sam wouldn’t trust her with Nick’s back, either. Piper wanted her interview with the Vault Dweller, though. Sam gave it to her. He’d been interviewed harder by better.

Along the way to the ruins of C.I.T., they passed by Trinity Tower, where there was an actor, one Rex Goodman, who somewhat disappointingly, did not seem to be a werewolf. With a name like Rex Goodman, it was a bloody shame that he wasn’t a werewolf. What Rex Goodman was, however, was being held prisoner after trying to educate the super mutants on human culture. He’d succeeded, after a fashion, in his task with at least one, a super human called Strong who wanted to find the milk of human kindness. Sam, Nick, and Piper fought their way up the tower to rescue the actor and the mutant kindness-seeker, and then the five of them fought their way back down.

Once Rex and Strong finished explaining what Strong wanted, Sam speculated, “It’s probably on top of Cori Celesti. Or in a temple in the Hublands. That’s where all those things end up. Anyway, I’m off to kill a Courser.”

So he left the super mutant scratching his head, confused, near Trinity Tower.

On the way to C.I.T., they passed by the location that P.A.M. had selected for Sam to clear to establish Mercer Safehouse to expand the reach of the Railroad, a place called Hangman’s Alley, and it was there that Deacon found them. He still seemed unnerved. Deacon seemed convinced that the world kind of stopped when Sam was not around. The small group cleared out the hostiles, mostly raiders and a few turrets. Piper assisted in the task, although Sam tried not to say too much about why he was clearing out that area around her, lest he compromise the Railroad to a muckraker who kept stirring up synth hysteria, synth hysteria which was even now costing lives, human or otherwise.

Establishing Mercer Safehouse involved constructing barricades, which was bloody easy in the post-apocalyptic world. Nick and Deacon set up more complicated automated defenses on top of the barricades. Piper milled about uselessly, not even taking notes or asking why Sam and Nick had suddenly decided they were going to set up a settlement. She didn’t even seem to take much notice of Deacon’s presence in the group. Some journalist. A short time later, Sam looked proudly upon what they had wrought in the newly established safehouse.

Then they were on the move again.

* * *

Turrets existed for one purpose: detect intruders and fill them with bullets. Unfortunately, Machinegun Turret Mk III SN E7Y9PN8P, who was supposed to guard Hangman’s Alley on behalf of some raiders, failed at the first part of that equation, and so it had no way to tell why it had suddenly exploded. It also had no way to process why there was a ghostly version of itself sitting in the same place where its now-destroyed physical shell once sat.

I SHOULDN'T EVEN BE HERE, YOU KNOW, a tall, robed figure nearby sulked.

Machinegun Turret Mk III SN E7Y9PN8P attempted to fill it with bullets.

YOU WEREN'T EVEN ALIVE! complained the being. The bullets, which seemed to lack any real substance, passed harmlessly through the figure, but this did not deter Machinegun Turret Mk III SN E7Y9PN8P. It kept firing.

YOU AREN'T REAL, AND IF YOU WERE REAL, YOU WOULDN'T HAVE BEEN ALIVE, the figure continued its rant. If Machinegun Turret Mk III SN E7Y9PN8P were able to distinguish emotional states, it might think that the figure sounded almost offended, but it couldn't, so it missed that detail.

WHAT YOU EXPERIENCED CANNOT BE CALLED DEATH. I'M NOT SUPPOSED TO HAVE TO COLLECT THOSE THAT CANNOT LIVE OR DIE!

Machinegun Turret Mk III SN E7Y9PN8P continued to fire insubstantial bullets at the Defeater of Empires, the Thief of Years, the Ultimate Reality.

The Ultimate Reality ignored the turret and continued complaining, BUT THEY WENT AND NAMED THE MECHANIC 'GRIM REAPER'S SPRINT'. HE IS SPRINTING, AND THUS, HERE I AM.

Nearby, another turret exploded as the Sole Survivor got the drop on it.

OH, COME _ON_! Death exclaimed, exasperated, before stalking off towards it as well.

Behind him, the ghostly remains of Machinegun Turret Mk III SN E7Y9PN8P, not real, never alive, faded into true nothing without even enough awareness to wonder, 'What was that all about?'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A: <https://memepipboy.tumblr.com/post/619952391224262656/ugh-that-anon-talking-about-fearing-the-glowing>
> 
> S: _**points to the link A provided, someone else's tumblr**_ Just emphasizing that I feel like we're justified in having the character assume it was way worse than it was going to be, because the way the game talks it up, _this is obviously a very common assumption_
> 
> **We love comments of all lengths, and understand the need for low-energy commenting like kudos. If you ever find yourself wanting to give us additional kudos, feel free to leave a comment of an icon or emoji of a heart!** <3


	22. Who Knows Who's the Hunter? * Just a Fort * Nick Picks a Fight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter songs: [Rush](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLXlKiCRHFg&list=PLLEELrwJ-FyotucudE52BnFg6vVn1AGne&index=26) by Wumpscut, [Radioactive](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktvTqknDobU&list=PLLEELrwJ-FyotucudE52BnFg6vVn1AGne&index=27) by Imagine Dragons because of course we were going to eventually include that one, and [Comin' For Your Tank](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmNheGag9w8&list=PLLEELrwJ-FyotucudE52BnFg6vVn1AGne&index=28) by Miracle of Sound.
> 
> **We’ve created a Discord server for chatting about Discworld, Fallout, or this fic! Feel free to join us at<https://discord.gg/6QM4Egy>**

_Who Knows Who's the Hunter? * Just a Fort * Nick Picks a Fight_

Sam’s Pip-Boy was singing the song of the Courser in the C.I.T. ruins. He followed it east, following that song, and he found the building labeled Greenetech Genetics. ‘Genetics’ was one of those magic words he didn’t understand, which usually meant that, some time in the past, wizards or witches in white coats had done something horrible.

The building was filled with Gunners, who were quite terrified long before Sam or any of his companions reached them, which in turn put prickles of fear down Sam’s spine. Someone else was already here, and that someone else was going through the Gunners like a hot knife through butter. Sam examined a Gunner’s corpse, and he speculated quietly, “Institute pistol?”

Nick looked at the wound and agreed grimly, “Institute pistol, and the wound’s fresh. Doll, our mark’s not far.”

“Better keep our eyes open for our mark’s mark,” said Sam. Who did the Institute want dead here?

On the fifth floor, explosions rocked the building, and Sam caught a glimpse of a man in a less-tattered version of the uniform that Chase wore. The Courser shrugged off multiple missile strikes and continued on, implacable. Where he was hiding, Sam backed up slightly and found himself against the wall. He was planning on taking a sledgehammer to that Courser, where missiles had failed? His mouth felt dry.

On the seventh floor, they found an elevator to the top of the building. Sam asked, “Nick, Deacon, Piper, did either of you see any stairs instead?”

Deacon looked peaky; Sam had noticed the man didn’t like heights

“Ah… no,” admitted Nick. “Building code violation, that. But then, the rule was always more observed in the exception than the obedience.”

“How many Raiders are lost every year to safety hazards? Not enough, you ask me,” opined Piper.

“It’s us I’m worried about, not Raiders. If we go up there and that Courser’s more than we can handle, the elevator’s the only way down. Well,” Sam made a face of displeasure, “the only reasonable way.”

He knew Nick was also afraid of the Courser that they were tracking, and Nick’s reasons to be fearful were rather more personal than Sam’s. Deacon definitely appeared to be re-thinking his choice to tag along with Sam Vimes. If Piper wasn’t afraid, it was surely because she seemed to be a bit out of it. Sam wondered if she’d been hit over the head recently.

Then he thought about young Sam in the Institute, and he thought about Kellogg, and he thought about the whole settlements that had been slaughtered by Institute synths, and he thought about how utterly bollixed DiMA was, as a product of the Institute. He stepped into the elevator, and Nick, Piper, and Deacon followed.

Before the elevator doors opened, Sam turned off the Pip-Boy; he didn’t want it giving away their position. They crept along past the bodies of Gunners, and they heard, far above, the Courser with what sounded like several Gunners at his mercy. 

The Courser demanded angrily, “I'm going to get in there. It's just a matter of time… Tell me the password.”

“Look, I already told you I don't have it,” protested the kneeling Gunner. “I'll help you find a way in, but listen, we took the girl fair and square. All we want is a little compensation in return.”

“You are in no position to negotiate,” the Courser snarled. 

“Okay, okay, let me think…” wheedled the Gunner boss.

“Time's running out,” stated the Courser.

“No please, wait. You can have the girl, just let me go,” the Gunner tried to bargain. “I don't know the password. I'm telling the truth!”

“I don't believe you are,” said the Courser.

“Oh God...please, no,” begged the captive Gunner.

There was the retort of gunfire, and Sam quickened his sneaking pace slightly. He didn’t much like Gunners, but that was all the more reason to give them aid if they needed it.

“All he had to do was tell me the password. Now, are you going to cooperate?” said the Courser, disgusted.

“Oh God, oh God…” hyperventilated a second Gunner, hysterical.

That was when Sam, Nick, Piper and Deacon entered the room where the Courser stood with his Gunner hostages and his murder victim oozing life on the floor. Despite their sneaking, the Courser saw Sam immediately, as Nick broke off to Sam’s left and Piper went right, Deacon behind Sam. The Courser demanded imperiously, “Are you here for the synth?”

Coursers were a sort of synth, weren’t they? And Sam wanted what was in the Courser’s head. He hefted the sledgehammer and replied, “In a manner of speaking.”

“Suit yourself. You'll die like the rest of them,” the Courser said coolly, as if four on one odds were his favourite sort.

Then he vanished, warping the air around him. Sam generally didn’t get into fights with supernatural entities, but he had fought werewolves barehanded. Invisible or not, he had to hope that being hit with a sledgehammer still hurt. Just like the shot of light that burned into his calf hurt. Sam watched how objects were displaced and knocked over, and he listened, and he swung, and Nick, Deacon, and Piper shot, and it seemed that at least some of their fire was hitting home. 

Another shot of burning light hit him somewhere in his upper arm, leading to more creative swearing, and Sam slammed a stimpack into his shoulder before again attacking where the invisible Courser seemed like he should be. The Gunners had kidnapped a woman; they admitted that much, and they sounded as if they had sinister intent, but that Courser had murdered a Gunner with plenty of witnesses. If Sam didn’t die here - and he couldn’t die here, he had to live to reclaim young Sam, although the thought occurred, that if he did die, Nick very likely would keep looking for young Sam on his own - knowing that the Courser was a murderer would make this a little easier.

But only a little.

But Sam lived, and the Courser didn’t, and this was not a reality that explored a furious Nick Valentine tracking down his slain lover’s kidnapped son. Insofar as this was not a reality at all, but an unreality, which the wizards were only maintaining because it happened to contain Sam Vimes, that line of story would have been doomed, anyway.

Conveniently, the Courser’s skull was smashed open, as if someone had hit him over the head with a hammer. Sam had no idea who might have done that. He picked through the mess and held up various likely bits.

Deacon turned away and made retching noises, complaining, “Ugh, you’re sick, man. Just sick.”

“Yuck,” said Nick “Well, I think you’ve found it. Now let’s see what’s behind door number three...”

“Eh?” asked Sam, not understanding the reference. He asked Nick to open the door, and while Nick was trying, Sam went snooping. He happened to find a password in a toolbox under the stairs, but he waited a little while, watching Nick attempt to hack the terminal without success and listening to Nick’s swearing grow progressively more creative. Deacon offered Nick advice, which did not seem to be helping. Eventually, Sam ponied up the password, to irate looks from both Nick and Deacon. Piper stayed out of all of it.

The trapped woman was grateful to be released, and she admitted, “My... Institute designation is K1-98. But I prefer Jenny. So yes, I'm a synth. If you hadn't already guessed. I knew they'd send a Courser. I just didn't think he'd find me so fast. I think I would have lost him, too. But then I was captured by these... mercenaries. And all this happened. Thanks again for your help. I'm going to look for supplies before heading out.”

Sam glanced over at Nick, who had frozen. 

Jenny added defiantly, as she regained her confidence, “And before you ask, no, I don't need any more help. The Commonwealth is unforgiving. I need to make it on my own or I'm dead. Maybe we'll meet again, under better circumstances. I... hope we do.”

Then she walked away.

Nick asked, falteringly, “Hey… Jenny? Does the name Nick Valentine mean anything to you?”

She did not pause or turn, and she left.

Sam asked quietly, “Did you want to go after her?”

“No,” Nick said hollowly. “She doesn’t look a thing like… er… I.” He stared bleakly off at the way she had gone. “I don’t remember what Jenny looks like. I don’t remember. But. She clearly didn’t know who I am. She didn’t even look at me. She talked to you. And Jenny’s a common name.” He adjusted his tie self-consciously. “And.” He looked over at Sam, locking his gaze. “I have you, doll.”

Sam blushed furiously.

It was at that point that Piper chose to interject, “You sure manage to find your fair share of trouble, don't you?”

She had actually been saying that for a while. It was particularly annoying and repetitive. Then it dawned upon Sam that perhaps Piper wanted to speak with him. He said, “I’m just trying to find my son. It’s not my fault the world wants to make getting him back so convoluted.”

“Hey, I'm not one to judge. Honestly, it's just nice to not be doing it alone for a change. In my line of work, things tend to get pretty hairy. I've been shot at, poisoned, nearly executed. Heck, until recently, they called the lock-up in Diamond City the ‘Piper Suite.’ Anything for a story, I suppose,” Piper continued.

“Nearly executed?” Sam said mildly, looking over at Nick. He’d alluded to that story before.

Piper insisted on narrating a story, sounding amused with herself, “Thank god. I'd been working on this story about irradiated drinking water in Bunker Hill. I traced the water back to its source, through these old sewer tunnels, and what do I find? The Children of Atom, setting up like they own the place. Unfortunately, they found me just as quick. Turns out they were not fond of reporters. So to atone for my trespassing, they decided to make a sacrifice to Atom - me. I'm kneeling there, about to get the boot into this huge sewer pipe... ...when I suddenly blurt out: ‘Atom! He reveals himself!’ And they buy it. They pulled me back from the ledge... and then gave me their induction ceremony. You are looking at an official acolyte of Atom. Took me a couple more days before I managed to sneak away, get Bunker Hill security to finally clean the place up.”

Then she paused and looked at Sam more carefully, at his shoulder pauldron and at his wrist, which was bare, because the combat had displaced his arm wraps, and he hadn’t had time yet to put them back. Piper seemed to wake up, and she took a step back. She stammered, “Oh, uh. Blue. You’re… a Child of Atom?”

Sam made his face stone and said lowly, “I travelled to Far Harbor, where the Fog reclaims the land for Atom’s blessed, and I drank of the sacred irradiated spring, and I was gifted with a vision of the Mother of the Fog, and she led me through the forest to a sacred site where I dispatched the feral ghouls and reclaimed a holy icon of the Mother of the Fog and brought it to the Grand Zealot Brian Richter, who proclaimed me a Messenger of Atom.”

“Ah… uh. Eh-heh,” Piper said nervously, looking over to Nick for help.

Nick drawled, “Oh yeah, he delivered Atom’s message to Brother Devin, he convinced Sister Gwyneth to repent of her sins and return to the Nucleus, an old nuclear submarine which was the dwelling place of the Children of Atom, he helped usher in the new age of High Confessor Tektus…”

Deacon, behind his shades, gave away nothing.

“I mean… Praise Atom?” Piper said, looking from Sam to Nick, as if she had never seen either of them before and was quite terrified now that she was actually getting a look.

Then Sam smirked and let the facade drop, and he laughed “Oh, but I had you going, there!”

Piper groaned, “You were bluffing!?”

“Yes, absolutely. I just wanted a look-see about the Nucleus so Nick could shove his brother’s memories in his head because they were evidence,” said Sam, very pleased with himself.

“Not bad,” said Deacon, in the voice of a high dive critic holding up an 8.8 score card.

“So Nick could… what? Nicky, what have you gotten up to without me? You have a brother? How even does that work?” Piper questioned.

“Slow down, Piper,” said Nick, also smirking. “Anyway. Yeah. DiMA. Same model as me… give or take. He broke me out of the Institute. Turns out I wasn’t trash. And then I said some highly unpleasant things to him, which I won’t repeat, because I was confused about who I was, so he knocked me out and left me behind because he didn’t have a better idea what to do. So that’s why I didn’t remember him. But we’re on alright terms now.”

“Hey, wait, the Institute made more than one intelligent Gen 2?” asked Deacon. He clearly wanted to say more and didn’t want to say it in front of Piper.

“Uh… yeah,” admitted Nick. “I was a testbed for copying memories onto a synth. DiMA developed his own personality out of nothing.”

“It explains a lot about him,” Sam muttered direly.

Nick shot Sam an irked look.

“Synths can do that? They can be more than just copies?” asked Piper.

Before Sam could say something, Nick did, “This here copy is questioning if humans can develop intelligence on their own, because now, I ain’t seein’ a lot of it.”

“Oh, Nicky, I didn’t mean it that way,” said Piper.

“I dunno, Piper. I think you did. Kyle tried to murder Riley in the market square because he thought Riley was a synth, and a Diamond City security guard shot Kyle down for his trouble. Kyle wasn’t even dead on the ground, and what do I hear but your little sister Nat hawking papers with, ‘Read all about it! Are synths replacing people? Is your neighbor really human? Read all about it!’” said Nick, humorless.

“But… synths do replace people,” said Piper, as if that were a shield.

“My wife was a synth,” admitted Deacon, “and she was murdered for being a synth. So, y’know, you win some, you lose some.”

Deacon lied a lot, Sam knew. Would Deacon lie about having a dead wife in front of Sam Vimes? Would he lie about her being a synth in front of Nick Valentine?

“Oh, I - I’m sorry,” said Piper, looking helplessly at Deacon, “but you might have had a real -”

“A human,” corrected Sam. 

“- a human wife, and the Institute might have done something horrible to her and replaced her with a synth,” finished Piper.

“Maybe,” said Deacon, shrugging, “but she couldn’t help how she was made, and I still loved her. But hey, cool, you’re a conspiracy theorist asshole, that’s good to know.”

“Y’know, yes, synths do replace humans. Yes, the Institute does terrible things. Whipping up mass hysteria about synths still doesn’t help, Piper. I admire that you’re willing to snoop up the Institute’s tailfeathers, but convincing people their girlfriends are synths ‘cos they leave the cap off the toothpaste ain’t exactly helpful. A lot of news isn’t in the information itself; it’s in the presentation, and you could work on yours, Piper,” said Nick.

Piper sighed. “I guess I should.”

“Now chin up. We all want basically the same thing here,” said Nick, “to hunt down to the Institute and bring it to justice.”

Or to Sam Vimes. That would have to be close enough.

* * *

Piper returned to Diamond City on her own to rethink her writing style. After she was gone, Deacon breathed a heavy sigh of relief. “A reporter. You dragged a reporter along. There’s maybe two in all the Commonwealth, and you found one and dragged her along. Ballsy, and utterly without any sense.”

“It was Nick’s idea,” Sam grunted.

“Piper’s my friend!” Nick protested.

“Wow, I don’t want to meet your enemies,” said Deacon. “I mean, apart from the Institute. So that brother of yours. DiMA? Picking up some tension about him between you and loverboy.”

“DiMA’s the leader and one of the co-founders of a free synth refuge on Far Harbor,” said Nick.

“Very interesting and relevant to the Railroad’s interests, but way to not answer my question,” said Deacon. “Sam said something about evidence?”

“DiMA’s political,” said Sam, in a way that shut down further avenues of conversation.

“Mm, yeah, that’s what gets me about any large organization, really. The idea sounds great. But you give small men big power and sometimes you'll pay for it,” said Deacon.

Sam narrowed his eyes at Deacon but didn’t say anything. They made it back to Railroad headquarters and spoke with Tinker Tom. Nick was mollified to hear that the Courser chip didn’t have to go in his head, but it was going to take Tinker Tom a while to make sense of things.

So Sam spent time on more missions for Railroad. While in the middle of one, he received a message from Preston Garvey that sounded pressing: the Minutemen were retaking the Castle.

Deacon seemed discontent with that news. “Love the job you're doing with the Minutemen. Historically, they've been little better than policemen, though.”

“And what’s bloody wrong with policemen?” demanded Sam.

“The bloody part, for starters,” said Deacon, “but hey, ask your pal there about things like the police rationing stations and the vehicle inspection checkpoints.”13

Nick admitted bleakly, “Oh, right… There were food shortages, y’understand? So the police were in charge of distributing the rations, but some officers were dirty, and crates don’t go missing on their own14 15. There was graft. There was corruption. And, uh… all vehicles traveling through designated checkpoints had to stop for inspection.16 Those checkpoints were all over the place. Only. Folks like Church pastors would be waved right through. Ex-military families would be cleared without incident. Reporters would be searched closely. Chinese families would be detained. Indefinitely.” He kicked a rock off into the rubble as they walked.

“Ah,” said Sam. “You have to run those coppers out. Get them prosecuted, if you can.” He thought about Captain ‘Mayonnaise’ Quirke of the Day Watch. 

Deacon laughed bitterly. “And when the whole system is like that?”

“It can’t have been the whole system. People are people. Most of them aren’t bad,” said Sam, “Nick was -”

“Nick Valentine did nothing. He worked with the BADTFL, and he hunted monsters, but the thing about that is… there are always monsters to hunt. There are always folks where the only cure is some lead for breakfast. And you can get wrapped up doing that and conveniently ignore the monsters you’re working alongside,” said Nick soberly, with a hefty heaping of self-loathing.

“But you’re not him,” Sam suggested, though he was well aware that Nick thought that everything good about him came from the original Nick Valentine.

“No. But. I’m no better, and I might be a hell of a lot worse. When McDonough kicked all the ghouls out of Diamond City, all I did was help them pack their bags, because I knew, if I said anything, I’d be next,” Nick confessed, his lips curled with disgust. “Most of the ghouls I used to know still speak to me. That’s better than I deserve. I should have done more. I should have done _something_.”

Deacon smiled grimly and said, “Cops, am I right? Ready to protect the people… when it’s convenient for them. Otherwise, it’s jackboots pushing down on the necks of the common people time, woo woo.” He gestured airily.

Sam fumed, and he wanted to hit someone, and that was especially why he couldn’t hit Deacon. Deacon was baiting him, he knew, and if he took the bait, he’d prove every point that Deacon ever had about police brutality. So he fixed his own grim smile on his face, and he turned to Nick, and he said, “I won’t let you do that again. And Deacon, if it looks like that might happen again, you know, with the Minutemen, I _invite_ you to comment on it. I insist on it, in fact. I will be very disappointed if you don’t.”

“Oh ho. You may live to regret that, Whispers,” said Deacon, the light glinting off his shades.

“I may live,” Sam admitted, “I won’t regret it.”

13 “History was full of the bones of good men who’d followed bad orders in the hope that they could soften the blow. Oh, yes, there were worse things they could do, but most of them began right where they started following bad orders.”  
_— Terry Pratchett, Jingo_

14 [Detective McDonnel’s Holotape](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Det._McDonnell%27s_holotape)

15 [Detective Perry’s Holotape](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Det._Perry%27s_holotape)

16 [South Boston Military Checkpoint Terminal Entries](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/South_Boston_military_checkpoint_terminal_entries): These lines were originally written months ago to acknowledge the conflict in Nick Valentine's character: he is pretty obviously written as a good person, and he attributes all good things in him to the original Nick Valentine, who was a police officer at a time when the police were clearly doing some very terrible things. Therefore, either the original Nick Valentine wasn't _really_ such a great person, or he had to have spent an awful lot of time willfully looking the other way because he had decided his specific mission was for the 'greater good' and therefore worth ignoring what was going on around him. Because it was written months ago, it wasn't _really_ intended as acknowledgement of the inherent conflict in writing good guy cop characters in fiction in general, but there you go.

* * *

They met Preston Garvey near what was called the Castle, but Sam had seen castles, and he was fairly certain this was just a fort. Preston seemed to read Sam’s mind, at least to some extent, as he said, “Everyone's here, General. There it is. Pretty impressive, huh? Its real name is Fort Independence, but the Minutemen always just called it the Castle.”

“And we want it… why?” asked Sam, trying to see who was currently holding Fort Independence. He didn’t see any guards up on the ramparts. In fact, it looked to him as if they could walk right in, which worried him.

“Psh, looks like a dump,” said Deacon.

Preston glared at Deacon and said, “The radio tower is the most important part, but with a bit of work this place could be a really strong outpost. Know what I mean?”

‘Radio tower’ didn’t mean much to Sam, who studiously ignored his Pip-Boy’s radio. He looked at the building thoughtfully, “Maybe, I mean…” Yes, he was already imagining how to fortify it, if they cut down some of those trees over there to get lumber…

“Our primary objective is to clear the courtyard. That's where we should see the most opposition. The wall on this side is the most exposed, but if we circle around south, we could also reach the main gate,” Preston continued.

Sam thought to himself that, in his head, he’d been too hard on Preston when they’d first met. For one thing, Sam hadn’t yet realized just how much the people of the Commonwealth were going to dump all of their problems on him. In that respect, Preston hadn’t done anything unusual in trusting a ragged stranger to rescue his people for him, despite all evidence to the contrary about what ragged strangers typically did in the Commonwealth. For another thing, Preston had done a very competent job organizing the new Minutemen recruits who kept joining as Sam helped various settlements. The Minutemen were able to handle rescuing most settlements without Sam’s day-to-day intervention, now, although they still needed Sam at least once or twice a week.

Sam said distantly, “I don’t suppose we could make hot cocoa and invite them out.”

Everyone, thankfully, understood the joke, although Sam wished it didn’t have to be a joke. Alas, mirelurks were big, angry crab-salmon monsters, and they weren’t the sort of monster that was open to negotiations. He sighed, “Anyway, so… they’re crab-things, so might as well give them a taste of their own medicine and try a… pincer movement.”

He was treated to a gratifying chorus of groans. 

Preston hid a smile as he shook his head. He called out, “We'll split up, and you can join which ever side you think needs the extra support. Alright, people, you heard the General. Let's move out. Try not to draw their attention until we're in position.”

Sam looked up at the walls, thinking, and Deacon said sarcastically, dripping with insincerity, “All right, I admit it. Kind of getting the chills here. Taking back Castle for the Minutemen would be pretty cool.”

Nick shot a look at Deacon and said, “It's about time the Minutemen reclaimed the Castle. These folks could use a victory.”

There were more orders and directions shouted, and the information was conveyed that the walls were infested with mirelurks, but as with most battles, it quickly descended into a disorderly fracas, only narrowly distinguished from a bloody melee because a large portion of the participants were using ranged weaponry.

Dogmeat showed up not long after the battle was joined, leaping on a Mirelurk before it could spear a young Minuteman.

A bellow, deep and rumbling, split the battlefield, and it set off something deep in Sam Vimes’s brain, reaching past the monkey brain and all the way down into the little shrew brain, which wanted to cower in an appropriate tiny underground tunnel. There was the mother of all these mirelurks, their queen, two stories tall and royally gruesome. Sam did what he did well: he ran, running up a rubble stope and onto the high wall. 

The queen tracked him as he ran, but she didn’t seem to know how to climb. Funny thing was, Sam had hardly seen anything here that _could_ climb. He’d seen Nick climb a tree once and…

Claws scythed at him.

There was only one thing a Vimes could do with a murderous queen.

* * *

The Castle was retaken, and the cost was blood. Sam recognized some of the Minutemen recruits from settlements he’d personally aided, and they were starry-eyed around him, the ones who were still standing. The ones who weren’t still standing were glassy-eyed, dead on the ground. Examining each fallen militia soldier, Sam crouched down and gently closed their eyes.

It wasn’t just the new recruits who were starry-eyed. Preston effused, impressed, “I've got to hand it to you, General. You've really turned things around for the Minutemen.”

Turned things around, and now they’d need to turn ground for graves...

Nick was more sober, looking at the bodies strewn across the courtyard, and he said neutrally, “Suppose we know why no one else has managed to reclaim the Castle before now. But taking down Mother Mirelurk was a sight to behold.”

“Those mirelurks didn't stand a chance. Who’s ready for an epic clam bake?” said Deacon.

“Mirelurk meat is pretty tasty, if you don't mind the smell,” admitted Preston.

“Later,” said Sam, his voice hoarse from screaming during the battle. Actually, if Deacon was even a half-decent cook, that did sound interesting, because Sam was not at all a half-decent cook.

He made sure he’d found all the bodies and asked Preston their names, where they’d been from. Then he turned to the survivors and he said a few words, because that was the least he could do for them, even if they deserved better. They seemed happy enough with it, anyway.

Then tiredness took him in a wave, and Sam ended up leaning tiredly against Nick. He yawned and asked, “So… about that clam… bake, Deacon?”

“Some mirelurk steaks, Nuka-Cola, Fancy Lads… we’ll have a cookout,” said Deacon cheerily, and he wandered off to marshall some of the Minutemen into helping him butcher mirelurks and dig a fire pit. Dogmeat roved the battlefield, rolling in all of the most interesting smells.

Nick sat Sam down and looked over him, critically examining the rips and tears in his attire for any wounds that Sam might be hiding. The stimpaks and other assorted medical paraphernalia had taken care of his wounds, but the aches and fatigue remained. Preston watched Nick fuss over Sam with some curiosity, and he sat down across from them and asked, “So… what sort of relationship do you two have, anyway?”

Sam froze.

Nick noticed that Sam had frozen and gave him a moment.

Deacon, though, overheard and interjected, “They’re married. Totally had a small, intimate, tasteful ceremony on Far Harbor with 200 of their closest friends. DiMA was best man. Memorable.”

Nick glared up at Deacon and snapped, “That didn’t happen at all! No, Sam and I haven’t actually talked about it.” He nudged Sam. “Is ‘boyfriends’ fair to say, doll?”

“Green,” was what Sam ended up saying, to the suggestion of ‘boyfriends’, which led to a puzzled look from Preston, and Sam coughed and corrected, “Yes. Boyfriends. Right.”

Boyfriends. He’d thought it, hadn’t he?

Preston smiled. “Oh good! You’re both great people. I’m glad for you two.” He hesitated a moment and asked awkwardly, “I understand that you two haven’t discussed it, but if you decide whether your relationship is… open or closed, could you let me know?”

Sam stared blearily.

“Sam’s pre-war and kind of sheltered. I’m not sure he knows what that means,” said Nick.

Sam asked quietly, “Do I want to know?”

Nick leaned back a bit, and he looked a bit embarrassed himself, as he explained, “Mostly, it comes down to whether we’re monogamous with each other, or whether we’d allow each other to have other partners.”

Sam looked scandalized, and he said quickly, “I’d never cheat on you, Nick!”

“I know you wouldn’t. But cheating is unauthorized additional partners,” said Nick.

Sam was quite ready to chalk that up as something that would happen either to decadent nobles or to folks from the Shades, but his brain insisted on doggedly processing through it, and he said slowly, “Some people have… authorized? ...extra partners?”

“Some people do,” said Nick.

Preston wasn’t saying much, but he was nodding along with Nick’s explanations.

Sam hazarded, “Oh, like Klatchians or goblins or Zoons…” Klatchian and goblin and Zoon men often had multiple wives. This was Ethnic Diversity. It was not bigamy, as long as they married at Klatchian or goblin or Zoon parish churches and didn’t try to marry at, say, the Temple of Blind Io. If they did try to marry at a church that didn’t authorize polygamy, they’d probably find themselves shipped to Fourecks. If they were lucky. Some churches were still authorized to perform the sacrifice of sapient beings.

Nick was giving Sam a look of ‘those aren’t things’, but Deacon said, “Oh yeah, totally. I heard about thirty Zoons who were all one big polycule commune. Got eaten by ferals. Really sad.”

Now _Sam_ was giving Deacon a look of ‘those aren’t things’. Polycule? That was wizard babble.

“Uhm. I think that sounds like… a lot of work,” Sam said carefully, trying to stifle his rising feeling of panic. He’d just agreed that he and Nick were boyfriends! That was a big step! He wasn’t ready to think that perfectly rational, reasonable people might have more than one partner! He was thinking with entirely too many exclamation marks for comfort!

“Well, doll, if you did seriously have your eye on someone else, I’d like it if you’d let me know and check with me first,” said Nick.

The gears of Sam’s brain ground to a halt. He wasn’t sure what everyone else did, but he jolly well took a moment, and when he was done and came back to himself, he was still sitting on the courtyard ground, with Nick at his side and Preston across from him and Deacon wandering about, directing Minutemen in what was being referred to as ‘crustacean devastation’. In a very faint voice, Sam said, “I will... do... that. You don’t, erm…? I mean… Was there someone else you…?”

“I don’t know,” Nick said honestly, “My position’s theologically dubious enough as it is, and I’m not looking at anyone in specific, if you’re asking.”

Nick flirted rather indiscriminately, so at those words, Sam felt a rush of relief. There was a deep, coiled up part of him that thought of Nick as _his_ , and that part of him was well-pleased. 

Nick looked over at Preston and asked, “So why are you asking?”

Thank goodness that Nick still had the presence of mind to be a nosy bastard, because between being exhausted and weak and hungry and flustered, Sam counted himself lucky to even be stringing words together.

Now Preston was looking flustered. Sam tiredly thought, _Ah-hah, now the foot is on the other boot… oh… wait…_ Preston fidgeted, took a deep breath, and admitted, “Oh, I - I… had just wondered if the General had ever thought about being more than friends, with er… Well. With me.”

Well, bugger. Sam was definitely back to being the Most Flustered Man in the Castle. He took another moment to let his brain tick over, slowly, like honeyed light. Preston was still sitting there, looking anxious and awkward. So apparently, Prestons weren’t the sort of predator that would lose interest and leave if their prey wasn’t moving. This meant that Sam had to make some kind of reply. _Bother_. He sputtered, “I’m old enough to be your father! If I’d started in my twenties or thirties,” which was what most people did. Most people didn’t get married in their forties, use sonkies every single time17, and wind up a father anyway. Of course, Sam wouldn’t trade young Sam for anything, but young Sam _had_ been a bit of a surprise. Sometimes, sonkies had little tears or holes in them, too small for the eye to see, but just big enough for a dodgy bit of something to sneak through, he supposed. Breaking into places where he wasn’t supposed to be, that was Sam Vimes.

Including, apparently, Preston Garvey’s heart?

“I know I haven’t survived through as many things as you have, General -” started Preston.

“This is not about survival abilities!” Sam said quickly. Preston was about Carrot’s age, maybe a little younger.

“I’m old enough to fight; I’m old enough to know if I’m interested in someone,” said Preston.

“ _Someone your own age_ , such as, I don’t know, a nice werewolf…” said Sam, who’d been thinking about Carrot and had gotten a few things crossed in his neurons.

Nick looked at Sam incredulously at the suggestion of matching Preston up with a werewolf.

“I hear Far Harbor has loads of werewolves. Total babes,” said Deacon, completely straight-faced.

Wolf howls had been nearly constant on Far Harbor, Sam had to admit.

“Nick’s older than you,” said Preston.

“Look, one, he’s not human, I don’t know if age is even a meaningful concept to apply to a golem, but two, someone in his, ah… fifties,” honesty, there, “shouldn’t date anyone younger than, oh, thirty-two18,” Sam said mulishly, and he could out-mule anyone.

At the word 'golem', Preston was, again, confused, and Nick had an expression on his face of 'Do you see what I put up with every day?' Deacon commented, "Preston is actually 80. He has a good plastic surgeon."

"I am not, I'm twenty-f-" Preston started, and then he caught himself, and then he sighed. "You're right, General. I should stick to people closer to my age. I hope this doesn't make things awkward between us. You don't need to worry about me. I'll be fine. I'm glad that I had a chance to say it, even though the outcome wasn't what I'd hoped for. Now I've said it, we can move on.”

“Ye-es,” said Sam, wondering how Deacon’s cooking was going. He was not suspecting Preston’s change of topic to shift to an even more awkward topic than twenty-somethings hitting on him.

He was wrong. Preston turned thoughtful and admitted, “I've been thinking back lately on how things were for me when we first met. It was the lowest point of my life. I mean... all my closest friends were dead. Everything I believed in had turned out to be a lie. I'd failed everyone who'd ever relied on me. I'd led them to Concord and we had no hope of getting out alive. The thing is... that was actually okay with me. I was ready to die. It was what I felt I deserved. It was what I wanted.”

Sam Vimes was frequently depressed. Not as often as he had been. Not as badly as he had been. Still. Each man’s depression was his own, a terrible, lonely, suffocating thing, so he wouldn’t dare say he _understood_ what Preston had been feeling. But he could relate. Sam had never explicitly wanted to die, but at his worst, he’d been much too drunk for explicit thoughts like that. Certainly, when face down in a gutter, ceasing to exist might have been nice, which was an absolutely brutal way to feel in the sober light of day.

His mouth was hanging open. That… made some sense of why Preston was willing to stake his hopes and the safety of the people he was protecting on a ragged stranger and why Preston had wanted Sam to be the one to wear the Power Armor and use the mini-gun. Sam asked carefully, “And how do you feel now?”

“Better. But back then, I had to put on a brave face as long as there were still people counting on me. That's the only reason I kept going. My point in all of this is that, well... you saved my life. And not just by saving us from those raiders in Concord. I mean, that you... made me want to keep living again. I guess that sounds pretty sappy, but it's true. If we hadn't met, or if you'd killed those raiders and then just taken off... I don't know if I'd still be around. I think I would have found some way to... you know... end it. Maybe not by shooting myself in the head or anything, but just by not caring about staying alive. So, I just wanted you to know that. How much our friendship has meant to me,” said Preston, who looked genuinely grateful.

Sam struggled, because his immediate reaction was that… he felt depressed. This place ground people down, the good and the bad, and he couldn’t help but feel that Preston deserved a better reason to want to stay alive than… him. But any reason to live was a lifeboat for a drowning man in a storm, and as just a drowning man couldn’t be picky about his lifeboats, a lifeboat couldn’t be picky about his drowning men. He gave Preston a weak smile and said, “The Commonwealth is better off with you alive in it.”

“I’ll say,” agreed Nick.

Deacon interrupted then, to hand both Preston and Sam piles of roasted mirelurk meat. Sam picked at it suspiciously and, after the first cautious nibble, he wolfed down the whole plate and looked over at the line that was forming for seconds. Despite everything, Deacon was actually a good cook. Cookery was just lying with spices, wasn’t it? So of course Deacon was a good cook.

After seconds and thirds, his post-battle exhaustion ganged up on him with his brewing post-meal drowsiness, and Nick led him off to a bed in the Castle.

17 Sonkies were free to Watchmen. The late Mr. Sonkey hadn’t wanted any new little Watchmen being born. Insofar as the Ramkins women were bred for breeding, and Sybil and Sam had only the one child between them, perhaps a few hypothetical Watchmen in _potentia_ had been prevented.

18 Randall Munroe has the conjecture that, for humans, the lower age limit of one’s dating pool can be defined as y = x/2 + 7 in which x is your age and y is the minimum age of your partner. The upper limit can be defined as y = 2(x − 7) in which x is your age and y is the maximum age of your partner. For Sam Vimes, if he is, indeed, around 54-56 (depending on whether or not he lied about his age to join the Watch), his lower limit would be 34-35, and his upper limit would be 96, which is quite close to Nick Valentine’s age of ‘around 100’, putting aside the fact that Nick Valentine is not at all human. [More information on Dating Pools](https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/314:_Dating_Pools)

* * *

Sam was sleeping for now, but Nick knew that the depth of Sam’s breathing was an unreliable indicator of how deep his sleep was. Sometimes, Sam could sleep through the night. Sometimes, he’d wake up at an approaching threat that even Nick hadn’t noticed. Sometimes, he’d wake up at nothing at all, and he’d scream or cry or stare bleakly. Sam was sleeping on top of Nick, head down on his chest, as he stubbornly continued to try to use Nick as a pillow, as he usually did. Nick had gotten good at being able to write in his notebook around Sam without disturbing his sleep.

A woman whom Preston appeared to be in awe of insisted on waking Sam up. She appeared to be trying to sergeant at Sam. This struck Nick as a fool’s endeavour. Putting aside the military record that Nick had found in the Vault files, which Nick rather suspected was a complete fabrication, Sam felt like an officer who’d been a sergeant for a long time prior and who could still, if needed, out-sergeant anyone. Nick was on his feet to follow after Sam as he got into a shouted discussion with the woman, Dogmeat at his heels, and Preston with an awkward expression on his face a few paces behind, when Deacon tapped Nick on the shoulder and ahemed.

“And what do _you_ need, Deacon?” Nick inquired, looking back.

Deacon waved him back, off into an unused room of the Castle, and he closed the door and asked, “So what’s the deal with Whispers?”

“In which context?” asked Nick, the ghost of an amused smile on his lips.

Deacon sighed, frustrated. “He doesn’t make any sense! He doesn’t seem like a compulsive liar -"

“You’d know,” Nick said, grinning.

Deacon gave the impression of rolling his eyes, despite wearing sunglasses, indoors. “His background doesn’t add up. He doesn’t add up. You’re the detective. What’s the deal with Whispers?”

Nick shrugged. “I’m not sure yet. I have a few theories but no hard evidence. Anyway, you’re the… intelligence specialist.” He smirked slightly, at that politick description of Deacon’s profession.

“I know I am! And I’m seeing a man who runs on anger, can see in the dark better than a super mutant, who says complete fantasy bullshit all the time like he’s actually serious about it, and who in no way matches his Vault profile aside from the post-traumatic stress disorder and the command training! And I’m not even sure about that. And what’s up with the lock-picking? And the constant cop references?” fumed Deacon. “C’mon, you said you had theories. Spill ‘em.”

Nick narrowed his optics as Deacon gave away that he knew what was in Sam’s Vault profile and hesitated. “On Far Harbor, there was a device used for transferring memories off a synth. Sam… recognized it. Specifically, he froze up.”

Deacon understood perfectly what Nick was insinuating. He started to say, “But that’d be insane, there’s no way that he’s a synth, the Institute wouldn’t give a synth a backstory that -” Deacon caught himself and turned the idea over. “No one would believe he’s a synth, because the Institute would never be that sloppy. And there he is, solving all the Commonwealth’s problems, getting dirt on everyone, resurrecting the Minutemen, working his way up the Railroad... Jesus. He’s perfect. So the Institute lets him toast Kellogg. That’s a small price to pay for handing them the Commonwealth wrapped up in a bow.”

“It’s a theory,” said Nick neutrally.

The door swung open and Sam stuck his head inside. He shouted, “Nick, Deacon, we’re going to show this horrible woman how to serve the public trust, protect the innocent, and seriously prod buttock.”

And there was Sam, right on time, saying something that was both a cop reference and complete fantasy bullshit. Double points. Nick sighed.

* * *

The horrible woman was Ronnie Shaw, an old Minuteman who had not answered Colonel Hollis’s call for reinforcements during the Quincy Massacre. Despite that, Preston was quite in awe of her. Shaw said she didn’t put any stock in titles, which was generally a good mark in Sam’s book, but he was not impressed by her and how she’d left poor Preston out to dry and had only shown up after other, better men had already given their lives retaking the Castle.

In any case, while some of the other Minutemen worked on setting up that magic communications system these people called ‘radio’, Sam, Preston, Shaw, Nick, Deacon, and Dogmeat put down a sadly malfunctioning old golem and reclaimed the Castle’s armory, which Sam directed the Minutemen in setting up around the Castle as defenses. Sam had a wicked, evil mind when it came to that sort of thing. Anyone who made trouble for the Castle now wouldn’t do so for long, indeedy-do.

Sam checked again that Preston was, if not stable, a reasonable facsimile thereof, and left him in charge of the Castle. Then he impressed upon Dogmeat the importance of staying with Preston for a bit, because Sam was going to be going somewhere that was not at all good for good doggies.

On the way back to his Power Armor and the Glowing Sea, Sam again found the super mutant Strong. Strong still wanted to travel with Sam to find the mythic milk of human kindness, and super mutants were immune to radiation, weren’t they? So what the hells, Sam let the super mutant come along. Deacon waited at the very edge of the Glowing Sea when the others went in. He still insisted that the world went wrong in some subtle but horrifying fashion when Sam was gone, but the Glowing Sea was wrong in a far less subtle but still horrifying fashion. 

In retrospect, bringing along a super mutant to meet Virgil wasn’t exactly diplomatic, but Sam had never been a diplomatic diplomat. Virgil handed them his hazy recollections of the teleporter plans. Then they trudged back and recollected Deacon, who seemed physically no worse for the wear, even if he did still complain of an odd fogginess when Sam wasn’t around. They let Strong do some wandering of his own, insofar as Deacon did not want to drag a super mutant into the Railroad HQ.

The plans, which were poorly drawn in crayons, were given to Tinker Tom. He wanted a bunch of components to build what was in them.

They went about the Commonwealth to scavenge in the ruins for materials. They had found a sensor module already, and were cresting over a hill on their way to the nearest hospital when Nick paused. He seemed to be listening for something. Then Nick grinned, charming, breathtaking, and more than a little bonkers, and he said, “Hey, y’know what contains a biometric scanner and a military grade circuit board?”

“You?” Deacon suggested blithely.

“At least I’m made out of valuable materials, meathead, but no. A sentry bot!” said Nick, deceptively mildly, and he ran over the crest of the hill firing, having noticed the bot before any of his companions had.

The machine that Nick had unilaterally decided that they needed to pick a fight with was a powerhouse, equipped with sturdy armor plating, powerful weapons integrated into its chassis and high mobility, thanks to mecanum wheels mounted on its three legs. The sentry bot was fast, agile, heavily armed, and appeared to be resilient enough to absorb a direct hit from a mini nuke. Sam said faintly, “We could have just kept scavenging…”

But no, despite Nick and Deacon laying down fire, the sentry bot was charging in, evading Dogmeat, who had somehow caught up with them and run up at bot, which led to a frantic Sam getting up in the machine’s grill with his hammer because the bloody thing had charged the dog. He smacked the head of the hammer into the thing, vaulted over it, and tucked and rolled over the other side as the sentry bot continued its mad charge, guns blazing. From behind, he slammed the hammer into it again, as Nick broke right and Deacon broke left and Dogmeat came barrelling back up, growling the whole way.

One chaingun fell off the bot after all the fire being pumped into it and Sam’s hammer strike, but the machine nimbly turned on a proverbial twopenny and promptly attempted to simultaneously gun down and run down Sam, who broke off to the side and swung low, hammering a hefty dent into one of the mecanum wheels. He sputtered, “Nick! You go on and on about how our opponents don’t have to fight, don’t have to end it this way, and _this_ is what you go and bloody well pick a fight with!?”

“Sooner we get those circuits, the sooner we get your kid back!” called Nick, who flashed Sam a manic smile, his pipe pistol spewing fire.

Sam realised that he utterly and entirely deserved this.

He still could have done without going down in a ditch, blood oozing from multiple wounds, and trying to scrap the sentry bot from underneath as it rolled over his comfy ditch. Just as it rolled past and scarpered out of the ditch, it tried to reverse and roll back over him, but that one bad wheel caught in the mud. Fire from Nick and Deacon blew off the other chaingun, and the sentry bot, for a moment, seemed to cool down, as if it were a prize fighter panting and trying to catch his breath, his bell rung. Sam had never been a fair fighter, and he seized the moment to hit the sentry bot when it was down, right in its voonerables: the dual fusion cores. The group scrambled back before it exploded.

Then Sam sat down and Dogmeat came up to his side, and he petted the dog while Nick and Deacon picked over the still-smoking sentry bot.

* * *

In Hangman’s Alley, the area that Sam had previously claimed as Mercer Safehouse for the Railroad, Tinker Tom wanted them to construct a reflector platform, a beam emitter, a control console, and relay dish. Oddly, he expected Sam to be able to do this. Sam didn’t understand why Tinker Tom couldn’t just do it himself, and he certainly didn’t understand why Tinker Tom thought that Sam was the one for the task. As it was, Sam mainly ended up carrying things for Nick, who had been a handyman, while Deacon provided ‘helpful’ colour commentary, which wasn’t. Dogmeat sniffed at the in-progress construction with apparent interest and yelped when some static shocked him.

Aside from Nick swearing a great deal over circuit boards and their fiddliness, setting up Tinker Tom’s equipment also involved stringing cables all over the place. Somehow, tamed lightning would flow along the cables to grant power to the various pieces of machinery. At one point, Sam had to climb up onto Nick’s shoulders to position a cable properly. Just as Sam almost had the cable in position, Deacon called, “Hey, don’t you usually do that facing the other way?”

Sam stared at the rusted nail in a splintered wood plank that he was trying to fasten a cable to, his ears burning...

Nick drawled, “Not like you’d know, Deacon. Now why don’t you go back to your picture books?”

Oh, so Nick was insinuating that Deacon had never… er…

Nick patted Sam’s ankle and asked, “You okay up there?”

Determinedly, Sam put the cable over the nail and then promptly fell off Nick’s shoulders. Nick made a panicked noise and managed to catch him in what, Sam was dimly aware, was called a bridal carry. Nick assessed that he had his arms full of a panicked, woozy Sam and decided that the correct course of action was to stride off to a quieter location and sit Sam down.

Nick lit himself a cigarette and offered, “Want a light?”

Sam pulled a cigar from behind his ear and took the offered light, numbly. He sucked on his cigar glumly, not looking at much of anything.

“Y’know, doll, I’m pretty sure _someone_ hurt you. Probably a lot of different someones, at different times, to judge by the impressive collection of interesting scars, but I think you get what I’m saying. And I know, whoever it was probably bit it when the bombs dropped, and good riddance. But. If they ever show up as a ghoul or a super mutant or something, I will absolutely clock ‘em if you want me to,” offered Nick.

Sybil had noticed that about him, that someone had hurt him. Sam hadn’t explained. He wasn’t going to explain now. He blew out smoke and said quietly, “I try not to think about it.”

“Then I won’t bring it up again unless you do,” said Nick.

Cynical Sam thought a little bit about what Deacon might say if Sam and Nick showed back up together after a smoke break, and he didn’t like what he suspected his reaction was going to be. Again. It was the sort of jibing that showed up in any group of people. Sam just didn’t handle it well when it pertained to his own intimate matters. So he said, “Could you head back and give me a minute?”

“Sure thing, doll. There’s not much left to set up, anyway,” said Nick, and he ruffled Sam’s hair and headed back and left Sam sitting where he was, alone in the ruins.

When Sam returned to the construction site, he found that Nick had walked into the metaphorical minefield for him and defused whatever comments Deacon might have had ready. Sam felt a little guilty about that, and he resolved to do… something for Nick. He was unsure what. He didn’t do nice. 

Sybil… Sybil, he would have humoured by going to one of her society parties, if he was in a conciliatory mood. It had taken Sam years to figure out how to Husband. Learning how to Boyfriend was going to take some doing.

In any case, Nick had constructed a mechanical monstrosity that not even a rat would deign to consider as a nest. He was busy trying to free Dogmeat from a tangle of wires. Deacon was lurking in a convenient shadow. Sam would have picked a shadow a bit more to the left, he thought; the coverage was better there. Tinker Tom seemed pleased, as did Desdemona, who had arrived. 

As it turned out, they wanted _Sam_ to teleport into the Institute. And Sam wanted to, yes, indeed, but while his presence of mind was catching up with his presence of body, Deacon sputtered, “Dez, you’re sending Whispers? Who, as we all know and love, is more like Angry Shouting?”

Sam could be quiet, if he so desired. He demonstrated this talent by not commenting upon it. 

“Your sarcasm is noted,” said Desdemona, irritated. “There's a man, or woman - we're not sure - inside the Institute who helps synths escape to freedom. Dozens of synths owe him their lives. We don't know his name, we've never had a way to contact him. So we gave him the code-name Patriot. If your plan works, and you're able to get inside the Institute, we need you to make contact.”

“I’m just saying, we all know I’m a way better option for a preliminary look around,” protested Deacon.

“And how do you expect _either_ of these chuckleheads to go find Patriot if you don’t know who he is?” asked Nick.

“Patriot devised a method to communicate with us one-way. The plan hinges on us using this method to close the loop and contact him back,” explained Desdemona.

That wasn’t much of an answer. 

She continued, “Tom's encrypted a message for Patriot's eyes only. Once he sees it, he'll contact you. Until you make contact, and probably after, you need to stay in their good graces. You need to infiltrate them.”

“Hell-o?” said Deacon.

Sam’s presence of mind was catching up with him, having made a good chase of it. The Institute was so close. The Institute had his son. He would have said anything and damned the fact that he hated teleporters and that Deacon was speaking quite a bit of sense. “Yes. Right. Shall I be off?”

“Stand on the platform and I'll give you the holotape. Just plug it into any Institute terminal and wait for the reply,” directed Desdemona.

Both Sam and Deacon grabbed for the holotape and tumbled onto the platform together, each with half a hand on it. 

Desdemona seemed to be unconcerned by that, and she drawled, “Tom, talk to me.”

Tinker Tom projected his voice nervously over the noise of the machinery, which was like a steam engine, “Booting up the scan sequence. This frequency is only going to work once. You-Know-Who doesn't make the same mistake twice. Going to have to cut a few corners with the scan.”

Electricity crackled, and the air smelled as if lightning had struck recently. Sam elbowed Deacon, trying to get him to loosen his grip on the holotape. Off to the side, Nick stood there with a worried expression on his face and posture, hands clasped as if in prayer. Sam thought muzzily to himself that he ought to have, oh, patted Nick on the shoulder or something before diving on a platform to have all of his atoms torn apart.

No.

Sam should have kissed Nick and damned whatever comment bloody Deacon made about it. It was the Boyfriendly thing to do. Gods, why was Boyfriending so hard?

Blue sparks rained down. Deacon tried to pry back Sam’s fingers. 

“So, stand still. Gotta lock in all those molecules of yours. Hopefully we won't miss any... There's only, you know, 60 trillion of them... All right, feeding our baby some juice. Let's see what she's got,” Tinker Tom shouted over the roar of the machinery.

Everything started to shake. 

Tom excused, “Oh, man. Don't worry. That's... all part of the plan.”

“Tom!” Desdemona shouted with concern, and then she reminded Sam, “Do whatever you can to gain their trust. Lie, tell them what they want to hear. Make up a cover story and sell it.”

“You think you can do that better than me, Whispers?” growled Deacon.

“C'mon. I think I got it. Establishing lock on the Institute signal,” Tom said.

“I don’t have to do it better,” Sam grunted, elbowing Deacon in the stomach as they grappled together on the platform. “I just have to do it well enough.”

Desdemona urged, “Just get all the information you can. About synths. About the Institute's plans. You jack that holotape into any terminal, and Patriot will make contact. He has to.”

“Got the RF. We got it,” said Tom, in the tone of an answered prayer.

“Find a way to save them. Nobody else can,” said Desdemona.

“Now!!” cried out Tom, and one could hear the multiple exclamation marks.

The world exploded in blue lightning and black void that faded and filled Sam’s world with whiteness, like the ice that had taken his life away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> S: This chapter has two pieces of artwork. The second one is one of mine, but the little mini-comic was gifted to us by [Jack of Legends.](https://the-mercurial-star-o-vesper.tumblr.com/)
> 
> A: In actual-game, Nick did randomly decide to go fight a sentry bot, which did happen to contain some random items we needed. Thanks, Nick. :|
> 
> S: The sentry-bot really did contain two of the three components we’d been told to get to build the Molecular Relay, though.
> 
> S: We’re a little hard on Piper here, but she does have quite a few lines concerning synths that are pretty troublesome. We just… happened to gather more than the usual number of them in one place because we wanted to address it.
> 
> S: Meanwhile, we have Deacon… attempting to forcefully steal the player character bit from Vimes at the end. It doesn’t work out so well.
> 
>  **We love comments of all lengths, and understand the need for low-energy commenting like kudos. If you ever find yourself wanting to give us additional kudos, feel free to leave a comment of an icon or emoji of a heart!** <3


	23. Unscrambled Eggs * One Shot, Blown * As the World Turns

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter song: [Weave](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znBh26qNvX4&list=PLLEELrwJ-FyotucudE52BnFg6vVn1AGne&index=29) by Ego Likeness.
> 
> **We’ve created a Discord server for chatting about Discworld, Fallout, or this fic. Feel free to join us at<https://discord.gg/6QM4Egy>**

_Unscrambled Eggs * One Shot, Blown * As the World Turns_

Nick saw Sam vanish in a flash of blue lightning and unbearable whiteness. Deacon, interestingly, did not vanish, despite the fact that both of them had been on the platform at the same time. Also interestingly, neither Desdemona nor Tinker Tom had paid much attention to the fact that Sam and Deacon had gotten into a brawl on the platform. At Sam’s disappearance, Dogmeat whined, and Nick absently scritched the dog between the ears. He muttered, “Me too, buddy. Me too.”

Deacon pushed himself up into a crouch, one hand going to his stomach where Sam had elbowed him, and snarled, “What. The. Fuck.”

Nick was a detective, and he didn’t have a clue. Why had Sam and the holotape teleported and Deacon been left behind? Nick felt a chill in his coolant as he considered his theory that Sam could be some sort of Institute project, which was looking to be much more plausible than his theory that Sam was a pre-War super-soldier project or a Vault-Tech experiment. 

Maybe the Institute had just let their own back in and left Deacon out in the cold.

Deacon stormed off the platform, got up in Desdemona’s face, and he snapped, “Dez! Uncool, you sending Whispers to do my job.”

Her reaction was delayed. Nick had seen that before, out of other people, in other contexts. He still didn’t know what to make of it. She said coolly to Deacon and looked over at Tinker Tom and Nick, “You've all got jobs to do. Do them.”

Deacon took a step away from Desdemona, and he flung out the arm not held on his stomach. He turned towards Nick and demanded, “Do you see what I mean, Sherlock?”

“Mmm, I prefer Philip Marlowe, but yes,” admitted Nick. Aside from that reaction time lag, some responses that people had just weren’t quite appropriate to the situation. It was easy to get distracted and miss those little slip-ups, and Nick had been extremely distracted by DiMA, but now he was back on the path of tracking down Sam’s son. Perhaps that case was at its end. Perhaps Sam would be back with his son any moment now.

Or maybe he’d be back with twenty Institute Coursers in the middle of Mercer Safehouse, and Nick would need to put a hole in Sam’s head. Nick didn’t want to think about that.

“So what just happened? Did the Institute just take back their man?” fumed Deacon. “Jesus Christ. That’s why I wanted to go! I can’t be certain about Whispers, and now I’m even less certain.”

At the edges of perception a mist started to close in, like the Fog of Far Harbor. Deacon hugged himself and hunched up his shoulders, and in a worried tone of voice, he said, “You’ll see. You’ll see how it gets… weird. And gray.”

Curious, Nick wandered out towards the grayness. As he approached it, it receded, and Deacon hurried along after Nick, Dogmeat at their heels. Deacon said, voice distrustful, “Or… not? This is different. Last time I was away from Sam, everything just kind of… shut down.”

“It’s still not normal,” Nick said, as he left Desdemona, leaning against a wall, and Tinker Tom, busy with his equipment, behind. Those two were quiet, not fretting, not congratulating, and definitely not commenting on how Nick and Deacon were reacting to the situation.

It was getting hard to think. It was like when Nick had gone too long without a good defragmentation and one of his subroutines was being a real resource hog. What was happening?

* * *

Ponder Stibbons usually went in for Somnambulistic Nibbles because it was convenient even if he wasn’t a sleepwalker. He didn’t get enough sleep to be walking during it. Today, though, he’d made it to Second Breakfast. Hex was overheating, and Ponder had dispatched Chatur and Alf to obtain some blocks of ice and some fans to blow air around. He’d sent Xian and Zinon down to the Butcher’s Guild, because one of Hex’s complaints was ‘rendering issues’, and Ponder was as yet uncertain why beef fat was causing Hex to overheat, but perhaps Gerhardt Sock, the Guildmaster of the Butchers, might have some insight on the situation. Ponder expected that Xian and Zinon would have a full report on whatever they learned from Mr. Sock on Ponder’s desk sometime next semester, after Ponder had already long resolved the issue on his own.

That was how it usually went.

He poked listlessly at his plate of scrambled eggs - scrambling eggs was easy, it was unscrambling that was the trick; Ponder would have killed for a good plate of unscrambled eggs, because it would have said fascinating things about entropy - and he sheafed through Hex’s copious printouts, trying to make sense of the problem. They couldn’t let Sam Vimes know he was in a simulation, because if he did, he would fall apart. That was what happened when a man didn’t believe in himself. So far, so good.

Next, real intelligences were being generated by the simulation, which was an emergent behavior. Not so hot, really. But Sam Vimes was a very real person, and he was making some of the non-player characters real accidentally, just via exposure to his own realness. Realness was, of course, a distinct quantity different than reality. Yes, Ponder understood that.

Which led to the problem that sufficiently advanced intelligences could notice the incongruities in the unreality in which they existed and ask the question, “What’s wrong with reality?”

Nick Valentine was doing that, and he’d gotten Deacon doing it, too.

DiMA had taken it one step farther. He’d asked, “Is anything real?” and he’d put together a method of testing it, too.

Hex had luckily been able to shut DiMA down, as Sam Vimes had, by that point, moved away from Far Harbor, so Hex hadn’t needed to model that area anymore. The problem was, Hex couldn’t just get away with shutting Nick down. Sam Vimes would be back, and Sam Vimes would notice.

So Hex had to present to Nick Valentine and Deacon a simulation that was convincing to two suspicious bastards, because if Hex didn’t, Nick Valentine and Deacon might go and tell Sam Vimes, but simultaneously, Hex also had to keep Sam Vimes convinced, and they were all in different areas.

Ah-hah. Ponder saw the problem.

Of course, Nick Valentine and Deacon weren’t the only real people in the simulation that Sam Vimes might talk to at a later point, but there were work-arounds for the others. For example, Preston Garvey, who wasn’t nearly as suspicious as Nick Valentine and Deacon by default, already had a small amount of Hex’s ant-powered processing dedicated to assigning his Minuteman missions and determining the outcome of random attacks against settlements. It was easy enough to use that processing power to keep Preston Garvey busy with the very things that a pre-real Preston Garvey would have contacted Sam Vimes for. But the workarounds that applied to less paranoid personalities didn’t work for Nick Valentine and Deacon, and while Piper might have qualified as paranoid, it didn’t take much processing power to model a little space and a terminal where Piper could write.

Around him, enjoying their Second Breakfast without any interference from stacks of paper were Archchancellor Ridcully, who was fond of Commander Vimes and would occasionally ask Ponder how freeing Vimes from the Ant Queen was going, the Bursar, who was safely ensconced in his own little world, the Senior Wrangler, who was eyeing Mrs. Whitlow as she oversaw the Housekeeping, and the Lecturer in Recent Runes and the Chair of Indefinite Studies, who were arguing. Rincewind was in a corner, not saying anything, because he wasn’t allowed to at meals by the terms of his contract.

Aside from Ridcully dropping in to ask Ponder about Vimes and the Librarian sometimes offering Ponder books, most of which he didn’t quite see the relevance of, the Faculty really didn’t care about Ponder’s difficulties with simulated realities. Before demoing it at that Soul Cake party, he’d tested it thoroughly first on dozens of students, and none of them had died of any simulation-related effects or otherwise suffered any sequelae.

But, Ponder supposed, tapping his pen on one of the sheets of the printout, that he had not tested his simulation on anyone with an in-dwelling quasi-demon of vengeance. He’d have to make a note of that for future endeavours. Such personages were clearly more common in the general population than Ponder’s past research had led him to expect.

* * *

Sam Vimes had no context at all for what he saw when the painful brightness faded from his eyes and he found himself alone, without Deacon. He’d been ripped apart on a molecular level and stitched back together, and was he even the same man? Cynically, he wasn’t sure if he had a soul, but if he did, how would it know to get back into this particular body?

_I managed it,_ said the Summoning Dark, smug in his head, sheltering in the darkness there.

_I could have done with you getting lost,_ Sam thought grimly.

The area was cleaner than he had grown accustomed to in the Commonwealth. It was cleaner than the majority of Ankh-Morpork, for that matter. Sam proceeded out of the room warily. The next room was impeccably clean, and the machinery all appeared functional. He was helping himself to a stimpack and a bloodpack when, over a speaking box, he heard a voice that seemed faintly familiar, “I wondered if you might make it here. You’re quite resourceful.”

Sam grimaced; there was his cover blown, but he didn’t see how Deacon would have avoided it. There must have been a very small gargoyle in the room, watching and reporting, perhaps hidden behind a panel.

“I am known as Father; the Institute is under my guidance.” There was something almost Ankh-Morporkian about the voice, although that hint of an accent was very faint.

The jig was up, but stubbornly, Sam crept along, anyway, down a well-lit set of stairs, the walls all metal. This place must have been expensive, if money had any meaning in this particular locale. He came to a great glass… staircase? Even among the dwarfs, Sam had never seen such a thing.

“I know why you’re here. I’d like to discuss things with you, face-to-face. Please, step into the elevator.”

The door behind Sam was now locked, and he couldn’t see any way to get it open again, even if he’d had proper lock picks on him. What he had thought was a glass staircase turned out to be a lift that was waiting for him. The hexagon-printed floor slowly started to move under him as he descended. All the way down, the lift slowly spun.

“I can only imagine what you’re heard, what you think of us.”

Sam wanted to say what he’d heard from Nick, H2-22, Glory, DiMA, Chase, Faraday, Virgil, Jenny… and what couldn’t be said, because the Institute had only left voiceless corpses behind. He remembered that Desdemona wanted him to play along. He kept his sharp tongue still.

“Welcome to the Institute.”

Sam pressed his face and hands up against the glass. He’d never seen anything like this, a vast, airy, well-lit atrium of metal and glass, where massive indoor plants were grown. Trees, actual trees! With leaves! Not the poor, blasted, shriveled things he mostly saw roaming the Commonwealth. Sam didn’t trust trees. People in clean white uniforms and coats scurried about like ants, albeit he certainly didn’t see any of them milking aphids. 

“This is the reality of the Institute. This place, these people, the work we do.”

The work. He saw none of the torture he’d heard about. He supposed they didn’t put that on the tour.

“For over a hundred years, we’ve dedicated ourselves to humanity’s survival. Decades of research, countless experiments and trials… A shared vision of how science can help shape the future. It has never been easy, and our actions are often misinterpreted by those above ground. Someday, perhaps, we can show them what we've accomplished. But for now, we must remain underground. There's too much at stake here to risk it all. As you've seen, things above are... unstable.”

The lift came to a gentle, seamless stop, smoother than the most well-oiled dwarfen lift. The ride finished underneath the atrium, without ever allowing him a chance to step off at a different floor. Below was another clean metal hallway. Sam grudgingly followed it. He was being herded, and he didn’t like it. It was better to be the sheepdog than the sheep. Angua had a brother who could attest to that fact.

“I'd like to talk to you about what we can do... for everyone.”

He walked into another lift, this one enclosed in metal, not glass. Sam realized that he was being given an _elevator speech_.

“But that can wait. You are here for a specific, very personal reason. You are here for your son.”

Now Sam had the sensation that he was travelling upwards, past other floors, again without a chance of exit. He reached back to the hammer strapped across his back, fingers curling as one of his big, angry, red buttons was pressed.

The door opened, and there was a well-lit light grey, almost white room with sparse furniture and…

Young Sam. Perhaps ten years old now - three missing years, three missing years, and Sam knew that he would weep - and in one of those white uniforms, but, nonetheless, young Sam. He was suddenly acutely aware that he was poorly shaven and covered in dust and dirt and mud and blood, most of it not his own, and at some point, he’d stepped in some brahmin dung and there were tears running down his face. Young Sam had probably seen his father looking worse, although Sam couldn’t quite remember when. Still, he tried to run to him and scoop up his son in a tight hug.

What actually happened was that young Sam caught Sam with a surprise leg sweep - he felt a swell of pride; this was definitely _his_ son - and the boy called out, voice afraid, “Father? Father! Help me, he's trying to take me! Father! Help me!”

“I… I… I _am_ your father,” Sam sputtered, horror dawning upon him as one of his greatest fears materialized before him. His boy didn’t recognize him. Three bloody years. His own damn fault. He should have come sooner. He should have… and he thought about all the people who would have died, if he’d ignored their pleas for help along the way.

The boy stood, looking down warily at the middle-aged man sprawled awkwardly on the floor, and he demanded of some point in the ceiling, “Father... What's going on? What's happening?”

“Oh. Oh gods.” Sam’s heart broke and shattered into shards of ice. “You don’t remember me. You think some Institute ba…” He caught himself; Sybil disapproved of Sam using Language around young Sam. “...some Institute bloke is your father.”

“I don't know you! Go away! Father! Father, help me! There's someone here! Help me!” continued young Sam, his young Sam, who was increasingly scared of the stranger on his floor.

Sam had never meant to frighten young Sam. He felt lower than the floor. “Sam, look, I know you don’t remember me, and I know you’re too clever to have a stroll with an armed stranger, but could we just… talk a bit?”

Get young Sam talking. That was always the start. Get them talking. Mabe young Sam would remember something.

Young Sam pleaded with the ceiling, “Father? Father! Help me, he's trying to take me! Father! Help me!”

There was that voice he’d heard before, which had given the elevator speech, the one that had just the faintest tinge of an Ankh-Morpork accent to it, and it said, “Sam… S9-23 Recall Code Cirrus.”

Sam looked up and over, where a door had slid open, and a man had entered, who looked like he could be Sam Vimes’s older brother, if Sam Vimes had a surviving older brother, and if said hypothetical older brother was neatly dressed in a white coat, green sweater, white shirt, brown pants, and crisp shoes. Young Sam convulsed, as if he’d had a seizure, and he fell still, hanging in an unnatural posture. A glassy wall of sorts came into place, separating Sam from the boy.

Dread washed over Sam like a tsunami, flattening him down and stealing the breath from his lungs. A recall code. That boy, his boy, was a synth. Someone had made a copy of his young Sam. 

The man with the faint Ankh-Morpork accent, who looked like he could be Sam’s older brother, commented coldly, “Fascinating.... but disappointing. The child's responses were not at all what I anticipated. He's a prototype, you understand. We're only just now beginning to explore the effects of extreme emotional stimuli. Please try and keep an open mind. I recognize that you are emotional, and that your journey here has been fraught with challenges. Let's start anew. I am Father. Welcome to the Institute.”

Sam mouthed, “‘Explore the effects of extreme emotional stimuli’. Right, so… you mean torturing children?” He stood slowly and his hand slipped around his back to the handle of his hammer. Oh no, he was a Vimes, of the line of Suffer-Not-Injustice, and there was only one way this could go...

The man tried to soothe, his voice obscenely sympathetic given the circumstances, “The degree of trauma you're experiencing right now is understandable... Please, just try to relax. I know this is all difficult to take in.” 

Sam tried to take the hammer to the glass around the synthetic version of his young Sam. The boy was just a boy, no matter his species, and no child deserved to be used for sadism in the fancy guise of testing. The hammer reverberated off the barrier, jolting Sam’s arms, and the barrier did not budge. Sam panted, and he gazed despairingly at the barrier. He turned to the man and demanded, “What happened to my son? Why did you make a copy?”

The man steepled his fingers and explained, “I promised answers, and answers you shall have. But... I need you to realize that this... situation... is far more complicated than you could have imagined. You have traveled very far and suffered a great deal to find your son. Well, your tenacity and dedication have been rewarded. It's good to finally meet you, after all this time. It's me. I am Sam. I am... your son.”

Oh yes, the facial features were there, that faint Ankh-Morpork accent, diluted by decades of living in the Institute; he was taller than Sam, of course, taking more after his mother, Sybil. Yes. That all made sense. His body rebelled at his numb, reeling mind. Sam swooned and fell over.

The man waited a moment and said mildly, “I know this is a lot to take in. In the Vault, you had no concept of the passage of time. You were released from your pod and went searching for the son you'd lost. But then you learned that your son was no longer seven, but a ten year old boy. You believed that three years had passed. Is it really so hard to accept that it was not three, but fifty-three years? That is the reality. And here I am. Raised by the Institute, and now its leader.”

Shell-shocked, his mind did the math. If young Sam had assumed control of the Institute in, oh, his twenties, he would have been in control for forty years or so, and Nick and DiMA had been made over a hundred years ago, Broken Mask was fifty-eight years ago, the CPG massacre a little after that… his young Sam wouldn’t have been involved in any of that, his brain tried desperately to justify.

But he’d personally seen a Courser gun down Gunners while trying to reclaim Jenny. Sam had heard the stories from escaped synths, like H2-22. On Railroad missions, he’d uncovered evidence that the Institute would still murder human children for scientific secrets that they’d found scavenging.

Sam Vimes had been afraid he would finally walk into the Institute and find out that his young Sam had turned out like DiMA. Now, he was fervently wishing that his young Sam _had_ turned out like DiMA. Sam thought he could deal with a DiMA. Yes, the murder of political figures like Captain Avery was a sticking point, but Nick was dealing with it. Sam Vimes could have learned to deal, he told himself desperately.

But young Sam hadn't turned out like DiMA. He’d turned out worse. He’d assumed leadership of a great corrupt machine that ran on the suffering of people and told itself that was all right, because those people weren’t human, and then the machine turned around and made humans suffer, too, just for good measure. Sam felt indescribably sick, and it was a good thing that he was on the floor.

He croaked, “What did I do wrong, that you think what the Institute does is acceptable?” Sam Vimes felt a right miserable failure of a father. Tears, salted like blood, puddled on the floor beneath him.

“Right, wrong... irrelevant,” dismissed young-old Sam, which chilled him to the bone. DiMA understood that there was a difference between right and wrong, and was possessed of a sense of regret. Sam could have dealt with someone like that, following Nick’s example. He didn’t know what to do with young-old Sam, who continued nonchalantly, “It was necessary. The Institute believed humanity's future depended on it. At that time, the year 2227, the Institute had made great strides in synth production. But it was never enough. Scientific curiosity, and the goal of perfection, drove them ever onward. What they wanted was... the perfect machine. So they followed the best example thus far - the human being. Walking, talking, fully articulate... Capable of anything.”

“Right and wrong are all we have,” Sam despaired. Gods, the Patrician had once given Vimes a monologue about how there were no good people, only different sorts of evil. Vimes didn’t want to believe. He couldn’t be himself and believe. And yet. He could deal with the Patrician. He couldn’t handle what the Institute had made of young-old Sam.

Young-old Sam frowned slightly at him and went on with his own agenda, “The Institute endeavored to create synthetic organics. The most logical starting point, of course, was human DNA. Plenty of that was available, of course, but it had all become corrupted. In this... wasteland... radiation affected everyone. Even in their attempts to shield themselves from the world above, members of the Institute had been exposed. Another source was necessary. But then the Institute found me, after discovering records from Vault 111. An infant, frozen in time, protected from the radiation-induced mutations that had crept into every other human cell in the Commonwealth. I was exactly what they needed. And so it was my DNA that became the basis of the synthetic organics used to create every human-like synth you see today. I am their Father. Through Science, we are family. The synths, me... and you.”

“You’re an Ankh-Morpork mongrel!” Sam sputtered. He hadn’t understood many of the words, but he’d understood enough to know that he was getting a eugenics lecture of sorts, and he wouldn’t stand for that, not even from his time-lost son whom he’d clearly failed in the worst of ways. Sybil was a lady of Breeding, but Vimes was Vimes and Clamp and who knew what all else. “And your… blood was a spell component for every Generation 3 synth?”

Young Sam’s blood and the same spells that had been developed from the testing of pre-made personalities on Nick Valentine in specific, DiMA being the control specimen who’d never been made to think he was anyone else… Then S9-23, with Recall Code Cirrus, wasn’t just any trapped boy. Make no mistake, Sam Vimes would have absolutely been intensely interested in rescuing any trapped boy, but this particular boy was blood of Sam’s blood and mind of Valentine’s mind... 

Young-old Sam said, “Ours was a unique situation. Vault-Tec records were easily accessible to the Institute, and they were looking for as young a specimen as possible. My parents were supposed to be kept in cryogenic suspension should a, uhh, ‘backup’ be required. But none was necessary. The program was ultimately a success; my DNA was fused with a modified virus to create the organic material from which our new synths are made. In a sense, our newest synths are all my offspring. And so they call me ‘Father.’”

So every Generation 3 synth was a grandchild of Sam Vimes? The slaves in the Institute. The fleeing escapees. The Coursers hunting them down. The synths he’d killed, to keep them from killing others. The synth he’d killed because he’d wanted what was in his head. All his family. All his blood.

_Kinslayer_ , said a thought that was almost entirely like his own.

Young-old Sam waited patiently. It took some time before Sam found his voice again and asked, “How can you do this?”

He just couldn’t understand.

Young-old Sam said, “The Institute can provide a better life than anything above ground. You've been in the Commonwealth. You've seen what it's like. I assure you that you are better off with us.”

“I’m not with you!” Sam bellowed, pushing himself up into a sitting position on the floor.

“Why? Because of the reputation of the Institute?” inquired young-old Sam. He stalked around Sam. “What about the people you've aided in order to get here? What atrocities have they committed? This... ‘Railroad.’ Willing to sacrifice humans for the sake of synths. Think about that for a moment. Would you kill your fellow man to save a Nuka Cola machine? They have completely disconnected from reality. None have any true claim to nobility in this world. Those days are gone. But we are not the monsters we have been cast as. I simply ask that you give the Institute.... me... a chance. A chance to show you what I've been telling you. We really do have humanity's best interest at heart. Will you take that chance?”

“A… Nuka Cola machine?” sputtered Sam, rising into a crouch. “You’re the one disconnected from reality! Nobility can take an axe to the neck! All I’m asking is you treat people - and synths are bloody well people, and so are all the people who have gotten in your way - with a little decency, you deluded martinet!”

Young-old Sam shook his head with faint sadness and lectured, “I'm sorry to hear that. I had certainly hoped we could work together, but every man must make his own decisions. If you choose to leave, I cannot force you to stay. Understand, though, that I cannot allow you to remain within the Institute. You may have safe passage back to the Relay where you will be sent back to the surface, but from that point... you must be considered hostile. I am sorry. I must think first of the safety of the Institute, and in the cruel world that has developed, those who are not with us are against us. The elevator will return you to the Relay.”

There was a boy trapped behind a glass barrier, and there was his son, who was a monster, and Sam didn’t know what to do with him. He had no sense of right or wrong, and he didn’t care to have one. He didn’t understand that people were people. Where was his boy who’d taken a goblin girl in hand?

Sam was dimly aware that what he had done here was not at all what Desdemona had asked him to do, but there was no way that Sam could have ever agreed to play along with what young-old Sam wanted, not even for a moment. It just wasn’t in him. The Institute had murdered Sybil, young-old Sam’s mother. It had employed Kellogg, her murderer, to take that synth boy out to Diamond City and…

Sam paused and frowned, thinking, as he straightened up to standing, and he realized, “You baited me.”

Young-old Sam’s lips pressed into a thin, severe line. “I won't lie: it's no coincidence your path crossed his. It seemed a fitting way to allow you... us... to have some amount of revenge.”

“You summoned the dark,” Sam said absently.

With Sybil’s dying breath.

Young-old Sam said coldly, “You may see yourself out.”

Sam paced off in a numb daze, only retaining the presence of mind to slot a holo-tape given to him by Tinker Tom into a terminal - if he couldn’t do what the Railroad had asked, at least he could bring them back information from the inside - before the teleporter broke him down into his component parts. Each and every one of them ached like a broken, bleeding heart and burned with unquenchable rage.

* * *

Nick Valentine was having significant difficulty thinking. He felt fogged out. This made fighting the raiders who had come back and tried to reclaim Hangman’s Alley particularly tricky. He’d been separated from Deacon and Dogmeat, but he could hear Deacon’s gunfire and Dogmeat’s snarls off in the distance. Nick had fallen into an almost hypnotic rhythm of fighting the raiders.

Eventually, there were no more raiders around Nick and none that he could find upon careful searching. He ran back into Deacon, who reported that Desdemona and Tinker Tom had evacuated safely away, although one Railroad member, Caretaker, had stayed behind because he wanted to tell Sam that the Railroad needed a location cleared of its hostiles so that a synth, whose designation started with K8, would be able to leave the Commonwealth safely.

“Whispers! Why can’t Caretaker just tell me, why does he have to wait and tell Whispers? Okay, so maybe I’m not a Heavy, but give me a good day with Takahashi’s Power Noodles, and I could be a Heavy,” Deacon complained. He was significantly more blood-splattered than he’d been prior.

Nick suspected that he was also a gruesome sight, personally. “Y’know, I know we cleared raiders out of this place, and maybe this group,” he gestured at a corpse with his cigarette, “was just a detachment that was slow about coming back, but this was awfully coincidental.”

Aside from pointing out that ‘coincidence’, in the context of Deacon’s complaint that Caketaker wouldn’t tell him the mission without Sam around, Nick also thought about how people he’d known for years, like Kenji Nakano, would address things to Sam rather than to Nick. Even Ellie seemed to do it.

Sam re-materialized on the platform, kneeling, head in his hands, sobbing. Nick ran to him, putting a hand on his shoulder. Sam stirred slightly at the touch and asked, “Nick?”

“It’s me, doll. I’m here,” said Nick.

Sam stood and turned and buried his face against Nick’s chest, soaking Nick’s tie with tears. He closed his arms around Sam. Nick held him and let him cry, and over Sam’s shoulder, Nick caught Deacon’s gaze and held it, telling Deacon wordlessly that now was not the time.

When Sam stopped crying and shaking, he looked up and confessed, “I blew it. The Institute knew I was there from the start and knew who I am.”

“Fancy that,” said Deacon, the words lightly inflected. “Almost like they were expecting you, hmm? You being the only one the teleporter let through.”

“Yes, because my son Sam is the leader of the Institute,” said Sam, pushing away from Nick and turning to peer at Deacon. “He was pulled out of Vault 111 fifty-three years ago. The Institute used his blood to make the Generation 3 synths and raised him, and he took the place over when he was grown.”

“But we saw a 10 year old,” Nick pointed out.

“A synth. They’re studying ‘reactions to extreme emotional stimuli’ with him,” Sam said bitterly, and he started pacing. “He was made as bait. My son had me let out of the Vault to see what I would do, but at least in part so that I would go kill his mother’s killer. He played me.”

“There are child synths now?” Nick asked, frowning. His memories of the Institute were patchy, but being a child synth in the Institute sounded like a sort of Hell he wouldn’t wish on anyone. They’d have to free him. They’d have to free all the Institute synths.

Deacon’s sunglasses covered a lot, but he didn’t look nearly as surprised as he should have been. 

Sam called Deacon on it, demanding, “What did you know, Deacon?”

“Hey, what makes you think I know anything? Aside from it being my job. You’re the one who waltzed right into the Institute like you had an invite,” said Deacon coolly.

“Sam was curious to see what had happened to me. He wanted to see if I’d even make it that far, and since I did, he wanted to recruit me to the Institute, which… I just couldn’t say yes. I know I was supposed to do whatever it took to get a foot in the door to contact Patriot, but I couldn’t. So you’re going. To tell me. What. You knew,” said Sam, advancing at Deacon.

“Look… maybe I knew the Institute took something out of that Vault, oh, fiftyish years ago. And maybe it wasn’t long after that the Gen 3 synths rolled out. And so maybe, just maybe, I was watching Vault 111 to see if anything else came out. It would be a nice theory,” said Deacon, shrugging one shoulder, “Y’know what would also be a nice theory? That’s you’re an Institute synth, and that’s why they let you in, Mr. Sees In The Dark, Deadlifts Twice His Own Weight, Solves Everyone’s Problems.”

Sam stared at Deacon. He smiled, rather like a deathclaw.

“Of course, that was loverboy’s theory about you,” Deacon added quickly.

Sam barked out a short, sharp laugh, “Good! Then my boyfriend’s a suspicious bastard, and he really should be, because I absolutely agree - nothing adds up about me.” He turned a fond look upon Nick, who smiled uncomfortably at the praise, given the context of their one shot at the Institute being blown and the horribleness of Sam’s reunion with his son.

“Jesus, your relationship is weird,” Deacon muttered.

“But. You knew. You knew that the Institute took something out of Vault 111 fiftyish years ago and rolled out the G3s a few years after and then you watched Vault 111 for me to come out, and you didn’t say anything!” Sam shouted.

“Of course I didn’t say anything, because you could be a fucking Institute infiltrator!” Deacon snapped back.

Nick admitted, “Sweetheart, a lot of the time, you really don’t make much sense, so no one would suspect you of being a plant.”

“You both are suspecting me, though, so not no one,” Sam pointed out. “Anyway, maybe I’m an Institute infiltrator, I can’t exactly prove you wrong on that without opening up my head, and I’d rather not - oh, huh, that would explain why plugging Nick and me into Kellogg’s head implant worked, wouldn’t it? - but currently, my plan is to take that whole place out, so I’m not quite seeing how my grand master plan benefits the Institute, at the moment.”

Nick wrung his hands, steeled himself, and made himself say, “Doll, you could have a recall code. If we got back in, if we got that far, they could cut your strings like a puppet.”

“Oh, I’m bloody well getting back in, and I’m taking everyone I can get my hands on. I’ll even take the super mutant! If they cut my strings, they’ll still have their bleeding hands full,” seethed Sam.

“You know what that sounds like? A trap,” complained Deacon, lips pressed together into a thin line.

Nick considered that, hesitating, “Yeah but, if he brings Strong, he’s not leading Strong into a trap, he’s leading a trap into Strong.”

Sam smiled radiantly, madly.

Nick took Sam’s hands and said, “Doll, whatever you are, what all just happened to you sounds horrible.” Sam’s son was a man older than he was, at the helm of the boogeyman of the Commonwealth. He’d spent months looking for his son, only to discover that his son was an enemy they had to stop, for the sake of the synths, and the G3s were all blood of his own blood. Nick himself felt guilty sometimes, knowing that the G3s couldn’t have been made without the technology pioneered in him; did Sam now feel some of that same guilt? “And whatever you are, I still love you. And Hell, the Institute might have recall codes for me, too, but I’m with you on this until the end.”

“Shit,” Deacon swore. “I guess you’re right - even if Whispers led us into a trap, he’d be leading us _in_ , and I for one could do something with that… So, Whispers, Caretaker’s got something for you. Wouldn’t tell me. Which was weird.”

* * *

Caretaker really just wanted some raiders cleared out of Beantown Brewery, so that the synth, K8, could safely leave the area, which made it all the more strange that Caretaker wouldn’t tell Deacon.

Sam Vimes did not think he was a synth, but he supposed that a synth wouldn’t necessarily think he was a synth, so that didn’t mean much of anything. The Summoning Dark was coy on the matter. What Sam had mulishly decided was that it didn’t matter if he was a synth or not. Nick Valentine was a synth, and he was perfectly lovely. No, Sam just had to be sure to set things up so that, no matter what he was, no matter if he was walking whatever team he managed to assemble into a trap, that the Institute would fall and the synths it enslaved would escape to freedom and that its many abuses, such as the kidnapping and the ravaging of settlements and the super mutant research, would all stop.

It occurred to him that if he was a synth, then he was his own grandfather, and that sort of weird whittle was only supposed to happen to witches19. Sam put the thought aside.

Desdemona was oddly sympathetic and gentle when Sam admitted to her that he’d cocked up the mission royally or, as the case was, ducally, which only made Sam feel worse. She sighed, “Well, thank god you're still alive. Listen, I don't need the details. We were asking the impossible. At this point... We're done. Our only chance to do anything in the Institute was contacting Patriot.”

“I’m still going to get back into the Institute, get the synths and any other relative innocents out, and burn that place to the ground,” said Sam.

Desdemona said sadly, tiredly, “I wholeheartedly agree. P.A.M.'s already crunched the numbers on this scenario, though,” which admitted that Desdemona had already been planning for the contingency where Sam failed, a sterling vote of confidence, “Without help, the Railroad simply doesn't have the numbers to do anything to the Institute. To forcibly free the synths in the Institute you need an army. There may be a way, not with us, but with your Minutemen. If you continue rebuilding them, you'd have that army. Then with the data you got using Tom's holotape maybe they can find a way back into the Institute. If we can help with that, let us know. But I fear the fate of all the synths lie with the Minutemen now.”

Deacon grimaced with distaste.

Nick said, “I suppose it’s convenient we’re looking at the General of the Minutemen, here.”

19 Wizards weren’t supposed to be anyone’s grandfathers.

* * *

“The Minutemen will stand beside you, General. There's no question about that. We still need to build up our strength. We don't want to start a war with the Institute until we're sure we're going to win it,” said Preston, standing on one of the battlements of the Castle, overlooking the Courtyard where Minutemen bustled, moving supplies around, setting up equipment, and making repairs. Settlers had already moved in, taking advantage of the more sheltered accommodations, and vegetable patches had been planted around the outside walls.

“Right, and I can recruit from Sanctuary - I know Codsworth will come,” there was just something about bringing a butler to a fight, and he felt a pang, thinking about Willikins, who would have died in the War, “and Strong, he’s a super mutant…” Sam started to rattle off.

“I’m with you, and we can get Piper, and Dogmeat’ll probably turn up. He usually does,” said Nick.

“I'll be behind you. Very, very far behind you,” volunteered Deacon.

“Are there any settlements that need help?” Sam asked, insofar as that was the cornerstone of the Minuteman recruitment policy. They ran out, helped people, and hoped they’d join up. It was sort of the inverse how Dukes typically behaved, which was more: ride out, find a village that was minding its own business, ransack it, and press-gang the survivors. Sam found it refreshing, and it said interesting things about the Commonwealth mindset that the people the Minutemen helped did usually join up.

Preston admitted hesitantly, “Got a strange message. From a robot. Said it was from someplace called Graygarden. I couldn't figure out exactly what it wanted, but, well... may as well check it out. You never know.” He put the location on Sam’s PipBoy.

Nick’s eyes lit up at the suggestion of helping robots, and he craned his head to look at the Pip-Boy, suggesting, “How about we grab Piper on the way?”

* * *

They found Piper at _Publick Occurrences_ , where she had a new article out about their intrepid mission to hunt down a Courser, which Sam looked over, pursing his lips. “Hmm, still a bit sensationalist, and you’re overstating what I did,” he scowled meaningfully at her, “but it’s better. I think de Worde would have published it.” Then he looked off in the distance and muttered direly, “Granted, he also published Rocky’s sports column…”

“De Worde?” Piper asked, puzzled.

“Oh, just someone I knew pre-War. Chief editor of a newspaper,” Sam said absently, feeling rather depressed to think that young de Worde was now centuries dead. Vimes and de Worde had their differences, to be sure, but Sybil had derived endless entertainment from the political cartoons in the Times. She and Sam had a private battle over who could buy up the ones with Sam in them first. She had usually won.

“It was difficult to write. I had trouble focusing the entire time,” said Piper, pensively, as she rubbed her temples, “and I haven’t really gotten much of a reaction from anyone over it. I don’t feel like I’m doing my job properly if I’m not at least outraging people.”

“I know the feeling,” Sam admitted.

“You know, I still really appreciate the fact that you're not an idiot,” said Piper.

“What?” asked Sam, who was used to being told that he wasn’t the sharpest knife up the sleeve, although possibly the bluntest truncheon hanging from the belt.

Piper seemed to realize what she’d just said and backpedalled bashfully, “No, I didn't mean like... I could just use some help. This isn't the sort of thing I'd normally bother anyone else with, but you just seem really good with people and I've got this issue. With my sister. Nat. Becoming me.”

“I’m. Really… good with people?” Sam said incredulously, and he looked at Nick. “Did you mean him?” Then he looked at Deacon. “Did you mean _him_?” Deacon smirked, while Nick just shook his head.

Piper rolled her eyes. “Oh har har. Seriously, though. I mean, think about the life we lead. No offense intended, Blue, but personal safety doesn't exactly seem like either of our strong suits. I can't have her ending up like her big sister, dodging bullets and running from all the people she pisses off. It's part of the reason I'm on the road so much. I keep thinking maybe, if I make myself scarce, if I'm not around her enough, she'll cool off. She'll just go back to being sweet, innocent Nat, papergirl, and all-around upstanding citizen. What do I do, Blue?” 

While Piper spoke, Deacon started to idly wander around the small combination office and home, glancing absently at anything left out, paying special focus to any open drawer of any filing cabinet. Nick frowned and followed Deacon, possibly to keep an eye on him.

Sam said, “Setting aside the fact that you think ‘papergirl’ and ‘all-around upstanding citizen’ are mutually inclusive concepts, ye gods, she’s a child! You can’t avoid her. She needs your attention. I understand you’ve been forced into a parent’s role too early, but you have to do the job laid out in front of you.”

Deacon’s wandering took him to the second level, and Nick continued to follow him.

“You’re right. I need to make time to be there for her more often. Thanks, Blue. Who'd expect wandering off with a stranger to turn out this well?” said Piper, smiling fondly at Sam.

“Yes, you should. Maybe read with her at a set time? But about that, I did want to detain you a little further. I’m going for the Institute. I just need to build the Minutemen... into an army. I wanted to know if I could count on you for the strike against the Institute as a sort of… Special,” said Sam.

Sam could hear the sound of fingers on keys coming from the upper level, but they were cut short. Then he overheard a whispered argument. He knew that Piper had her imp terminal up there, and suspected that Deacon had tried to read from it and that Nick was stopping him.

Piper looked puzzled but appeared to decipher what Sam meant by the context. “Oh, I’m down with that,” said Piper, grinning slowly, “You know, I don't exactly feel like you've seen me at my best thus far, Blue. I'm loud and pushy and constantly getting in over my head.”

“What makes you say that?” Sam said wryly.

“Oh, the fact that you’ve spent more than five minutes with me? But seriously, could I get you a drink sometime?” suggested Piper.

The noise in the upper level stopped.

“I don’t drink,” Sam said, without thinking much about it.

Piper arched an eyebrow. “I’m pretty sure I could find you some soda that’s not spiked. Or, oh, we could go listen to Magnolia!”

Nick walked back down the stairs as he spoke. With gentle consternation, he suggested, “Piper, isn’t he a bit old for you?” 

Sam realized that he was missing something.

Piper said breezily, “He’s one well-preserved relic.” Then she looked at Sam and appeared to have something stuck in her eye, because she was fluttering her eyelashes. “C’mon, Blue. You and me. We could be a good couple, if that antique boyfriend of yours doesn’t mind.”

Oh yes, Sam was definitely missing something. Piper was hitting on him, and her young enough to be a daughter to him. He stared up at the ceiling, and then he rubbed his eyes blearily. So far, he had a century-old fancy golem, a two century-old brain shoved in a tin can, a twenty-something man, and now a twenty-something woman all showing interest in him. Where had all this variety been, when he was young? Granted, when Sam had been young, he had not possessed the open-mindedness he would have needed to appreciate said variety, more was the pity. Carefully shoving his panic off to the side, he looked back down at Piper and stated flatly, “I don’t date twenty-somethings.”

“Aw,” said Piper, clearly disappointed. “You like them… older?” She looked sidelong at Nick.

“More _mature_ , anyway,” said Sam.

“Shame. Nat could use a man around… and so could I,” said Piper. “Where are you off to now?”

“Greygarden. Some golems need help,” said Sam.

“Golems? Oh, you mean robots. You’re weird about that, Blue,” Piper reminisced, “Nick explained the difference between synths and robots to me once. Suffice it to say, it didn't make thrilling news.”

Nick said sarcastically, offended, “The difference between robots and synths? Well, we're prettier, to start with.”

“Pretty ugly, oooh,” said Deacon, straightening from Piper’s terminal. He had obviously taken advantage of Nick’s distraction.

“Don’t you listen to him, Nick,” Sam sniffed, reaching over to attempt to adjust Nick’s tie and smooth his collar.

“Never do,” said Nick.

“Anyway, robots in distress… could be a story, though definitely not a human interest story,” Piper speculated, and then she walked out to call to Nat, who was hawking papers outside, “Nat! I’m going to go check out Graygarden with Blue and his crew. If I’m not back by dinner, go get Ellie, and she’ll find some random Vault dweller off the street to rescue Nicky.”

* * *

Graygarden was a tidy, albeit odd-looking, garden. Sam didn’t know much about gardens. He avoided them. Maybe it was normal to have plants in water with no soil? Certainly, the water of the Ankh River had been solid enough to support plants, and he expected that plants would find it very… nutritious. A golem much like Codsworth swept up to him and introduced in a female voice, “Welcome to Graygarden, darling! This is the Commonwealth's first and only hydroponics facility run entirely by robots.”

“It all seems to be… in order?” Sam hazarded, looking at the tatos suspiciously. He didn’t trust a fruit that couldn’t decide if it was a tomato or a potato.

“Of course, darling,” agreed the floating squid golem, “Our unique hierarchy allows for constant operation. You see, there are two kinds of robots here. The worker drones carry out labor and maintenance. We supervisors - that is, myself, Greene and Brown - possess sophisticated cognition processors. We are capable of complex analysis and decision-making, a testament to the genius of our creator, Doctor Edward Gray.”

Sam was about to say, “Right, so, where’s the problem?”

Nick, however, was also saying, in a close, conspiratorial tone that Sam personally recognized, “You're no synth, but you sure got panache,” and he took one of her grasper arms in a courtly fashion.

This led to Sam turning on Nick and snapping, “You can stop making fun of me!”

Genuine, innocent bewilderment spread across Nick, who backed away and asked, “You feelin’ okay, doll?”

Sam was not particularly ept at matters of courtship. However, Nick Valentine flirted enough - with Irma, with random Assaultrons, with even Piper a bit, and now with this random squid golem - that Sam could pick up that, yes, Nick Valentine flirted.

It bothered him. There was a time when women had treated him as a rather pathetic object of mockery, and Nick was in no sense a woman, but Nick flirting with other people right in front of Sam made Sam feel like the butt of a joke. It wound up his spring, and now, his spring had snapped.

“You flirting with other people right in front of me! Do you think that’s funny?” Sam shouted.

“...oh. Boy,” muttered Deacon, as Sam went volcanic, like a long-forgotten lava goddess. He sidled over to the lady squid golem. “Excuse him, no one ever put his combat inhibitor in, factory defect, y’know, and he just goes off like that. Why don’t you just tell me what’s up here, and then we’ll be ready to go when they’re done with… that?” Deacon gestured vaguely at Sam and Nick.

“What?” said Nick, both confused and alarmed. “I wasn’t making fun of you. Flirting’s just something I do. I don’t mean anything by it.”

“Don’t mean anything by it? Then how do I bloody well know you mean anything by me!?” Sam demanded, getting up in Nick’s face, though it took standing on tip-toes to do so.

“I would say, ‘Aside from the obvious’, but apparently it’s not that obvious if we’re having this discussion now, here, right in public, in front of the local gossip columnist and random strangers we’ve just met,” Nick grumbled. “I mean… damn. I love you, I’m your partner, I’ll have your back in a fight day or night, I’ll follow you through swamps and weird tunnels and into the Glowing Sea… I don’t know what you’re wanting me to say or do here, Sam.”

The squid golem asked of Deacon, “Tell me, darling, what do you think of the water around here?”

“Wet. Definitely wet. Not just moist. It’s putting in a solid effort, only it’s not, because it’s liquid,” said Deacon.

“I want you to stop making a laughingstock out of me by hitting on everything that moves!” Sam snarled. He was being unfair, he dimly realized, even as he did that. He’d never actually mentioned anything to Nick. He’d just let it simmer.

“I… don’t actually hit on everything that moves,” Nick corrected, frowning, alarm still clear in his eyes. “I’m not trying to make a laughingstock of you. That was never my intention. I can see this is important to you, although I wish you could have picked a better time. So I’ll try to scale it back, but I’m not perfect. I can’t guarantee I’m not going to slip up here and there.”

“Maybe if you gave Nicky more to work with, y’know, flirted back at him, he might not look to others for some witty repartee,” opined Piper.

The lady squid golem complained to Deacon, righteously affronted, “Take it from me, dear, it's ghastly. Simply ghastly. Pressure is down. Radiation is up. Why, it's practically toxic. Just think what it must be doing to my skin! This will never do. I don't mean to impose, darling, but... perhaps you could lend us a hand?”

“Your… skin. That you don’t have. Wow, water must be pretty bad,” Deacon deadpanned. “Yeah, sure, we’ll help. Regular Scouts, we are. Give me the details.”

Piper’s suggestion that Sam ought to flirt more with Nick threw a wrench into his broken spring. “I… what?”

“Yeah, like that he’s got pretty eyes,” Piper encouraged.

Nick looked embarrassed and tugged down his fedora to shade his eyes more effectively. “Piper, please…”

The lady golem explained to Deacon, “Most of our water comes from the old Weston plant, south of here. Such an eyesore. Be a dear and pay it a visit, hmm? See what you can do? Maybe tidy up the place? It must be filthy. If you can get it working again, I'm sure I can... come up with something for you.”

“I could do with some cilantro. Can never have enough cilantro,” Deacon said, looking around the plants in the garden as if he might find some cilantro there.

“And why are _you_ going on about Nick’s eyes?” Sam growled at Piper.

“Because you aren’t, and someone should!” argued Piper.

“Sam is fine, you don’t need to get on his case…” Nick half-pleaded.

Deacon crossed his arms and tapped his foot and ahemed loudly, “Yo, whenever you’re done with _As The World Turns_ , we’re going to the Weston Water Treatment Plant.”

Sam paused and inhaled. He was being unfair. He knew it. Nick loved him very much and clearly demonstrated so every day and wasn’t in any way trying to make a mockery of him. Piper was perhaps not wrong that Sam did not demonstrate his feelings in return perhaps half so clearly. What Sam then said was the highest praise he could think to give to anyone.

It was also, “Nick Valentine, you’re a good copper.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> S: We used a bit of artistic license in adding the forcefield around synth-Young Sam, rather than having him in the cell right away. Assume that Hex feels the best way to demonstrate to Sam that this is, indeed, Young Sam is to have Young Sam knock Sam on his ass.
> 
> S: As the fic artist, I’m not required to love all my children equally. I can definitely choose favorites, and I think the pic of Deacon dealing with Supervisor White because the Sole Survivor is too busy getting jealous over dumb stuff is my favorite. Poor ol’ Deacon spent the end of last chapter trying to forcefully take over the Player Character bit, and the end of this chapter getting stuck with it (for a Minutemen mission, of all things) and finds he doesn’t like it. But also… the pic just turned out well.
> 
> **We love comments of all lengths, and understand the need for low-energy commenting like kudos. If you ever find yourself wanting to give us additional kudos, feel free to leave a comment of an icon or emoji of a heart!** <3


	24. Of Equal Faith * Running Laying Still * Maybe Never Again * Name in Lights * H̶̨͚̅͝͠è̴͇̮̃̄ͅx̴͖̪̌͂ ̵͂͂̑ͅ|̴̨͔͇͉̥͗ ̷̡̘̟̗̈́͛͊P̷̢̛͕̍̓̈ỉ̷̧͕͉̏̚ͅp̷̱̟͔͊̈́ͅ-̷̛̝͍̩̣͛̔̉B̷͚̠͌͗̇o̴͙̰͙̜̰͛͂̐y̶̨̲̺͓̆

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter songs: [Seven Nation Army](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0J2QdDbelmY&list=PLLEELrwJ-FyotucudE52BnFg6vVn1AGne&index=30) by the White Stripes, [My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkIWmsP3c_s&list=PLLEELrwJ-FyotucudE52BnFg6vVn1AGne&index=31) by Fall Out Boy, and [Paradise City](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rbm6GXllBiw&list=PLLEELrwJ-FyotucudE52BnFg6vVn1AGne&index=32) by Guns N’ Roses.
> 
> **We’ve created a Discord server for chatting about Discworld, Fallout, or this fic. Feel free to join us at<https://discord.gg/6QM4Egy>**

_Of Equal Faith * Running Laying Still * Maybe Never Again * Name in Lights * H̶̨͚̅͝͠è̴͇̮̃̄ͅx̴͖̪̌͂ ̵͂͂̑ͅ|̴̨͔͇͉̥͗ ̷̡̘̟̗̈́͛͊P̷̢̛͕̍̓̈ỉ̷̧͕͉̏̚ͅp̷̱̟͔͊̈́ͅ-̷̛̝͍̩̣͛̔̉B̷͚̠͌͗̇o̴͙̰͙̜̰͛͂̐y̶̨̲̺͓̆_

A furious battle went on outside the Weston Water Treatment Plant between the Brotherhood of Steel and a group of super mutants. Insofar as most super mutants ate people and the Brotherhood of Steel were a rotten bunch of bigots, Sam decided that the best thing to do was to sneak carefully around them and allow them to continue slugging it out, because it didn’t seem like anyone decent was in any danger of being hurt.

After he got past them, he found a trap with a missile launcher and a tripwire just outside the plant. Sam disabled it.

Inside the building, Deacon promptly claimed the first available terminal and reported that the plant memos implied that it was the source of an outbreak of cholera; potentially a result of cheap equipment and general negligence also mentioned in the terminal.

Sam scowled at the plant in general, as if to blame the building for what its long-dead occupants had done.

Piper looked over Deacon’s shoulder and said, “And they wanted to hide it all from the press, huh? Too bad this is old news. Would have made a good story.”

As it turned out, the pumping area was flooded. The pumps to drain it were still in working order, but the place had been designed with turrets that would pop out when unflooded. It was sort of like how, when Ankh-Morpork flooded, as soon as the water receded, the muggers would pop back out with their switchblades at the ready.

The place was also overrun with mirelurks, which were less of a trouble than Ankh-Morpork muggers, because Sam didn’t have to stop and check if they were licensed; he could just lay into them with his sledgehammer without delay, and there was always the promise that Deacon might cook them up when all was said and done. A battle on slippery catwalks ensued as they tracked down the pump switches and took out the turrets as they were revealed.

Once that was dealt with and the pumps were working again, they reported back to Supervisor White, who was pleased that they had fixed the problem with her water supply. She showered them with a supply of produce, which Sam handed off to Deacon, on the grounds that he might be able to do something useful with it. The golems of Graygarden then wanted to join the Minutemen.

They had Piper back to Diamond City in time for dinner, which Deacon did a grand job of cooking, and Sam sorted through his backpack and handed her off a selection of comics and books that he’d scavenged, encouraging her to spend more time with Nat. He’d be back for her later, when the Minutemen were ready to take down the Institute. 

At the news that Graygarden had thrown in with the Minutemen, Preston remarked, “Huh. I guess I never thought of robots being Minutemen, but... why not? If they're willing, I guess we can use them.”

“I was just assuming they’d sign on? Most people do,” said Sam. 

Preston seemed to rethink his own thoughts, and he agreed, “Yes. Most _people_ do.”

* * *

Sam led various teams to help people. And wonder of wonders, the people responded to this. They liked it. It seemed like something that shouldn’t work, but it did. He didn’t dare think too hard about it, lest it all collapse.

Then it all collapsed.

The Institute launched an assault on the Castle while they were recovering between missions. That horrible Shaw woman told him that Institute birds had been seen and shouted at him that he had to set up turrets. He debated if he was allowed to swear at horrible soldier women. Angua probably would have been offended if he didn’t swear at her like he swore at the men, so he decided that he was practically obligated to swear at Shaw, which he did.

She didn’t react nearly as much as would have been satisfying.

Then Sam shouted for Nick to do something about the bloody turrets, and he waded into the fray himself. Sam was good at barricades, but he didn’t really understand turrets. The attack led off with synth patrollers, Nick’s poor, idiot brethren. Then there were the Institute Coursers, Sam’s misbegotten grandchildren.

But they were coming to kill the settlers that had come to shelter in the Castle and the Minutemen who looked to Sam as their General, and none of the synths would listen when Sam begged them to stop.

Wave and wave of Institute forces crashed down on the Castle. Sam’s world was a red mist. Eventually, the guns fell silent, and all there was in the world was the slow trickle of blood out of a downed Minuteman, no older than 16, who wouldn’t open her eyes again, despite the stimpack that Sam had jabbed into one of her veins, flat in her arm.

Eventually, he became aware of the fact that Shaw was berating him for not setting up enough turrets.

Sam snarled, “Sod the turrets! Ye gods, woman, if you wanted more bloody turrets, you could have built them yourself, you soured tub of yogurt, and since you didn’t, you can _shut up_.”

He rose from his crouch at the side of the slain girl - no, woman, she’d died a soldier, she was no girl - and surveyed the survivors. Sam pinched the bridge of his nose. He was going to have to make a speech. He owed it to them.

Speeches were a sort of lying. He couldn’t get up there and say that they’d died fighting slaves and that all the blood spilled here had been innocent blood on both sides. No one wanted to hear that, even if it was, broadly speaking, true.

He told them they wouldn’t have to do this much longer. The synths wouldn’t be their enemies without the Institute pulling their strings. They could all be free Commonwealth citizens together.

In the crowd, Sam saw Nick, covered in the thin purple ichor of the G2 synths and mechanist’s grease and blood. He saw Preston, smiling despite it all, nodding along with Sam’s words. Sam couldn’t see Deacon, and he made a mental note to check behind himself.

After the speech, Preston made his way up to Sam, as the crowd defused, and announced, “Good news, General. Sturges found a way into the Institute. We can launch an attack whenever you say the word.”

“Now, don’t go telling him that before he’s had a nap,” growled Nick, who had also pushed his way through the crowd.

“My wife had trouble sleeping,” Deacon said quietly, just suddenly manifesting himself not far from the conversation.

Deacon’s murdered wife had been a synth. Sam understood the implication Deacon was making. He just didn’t care.

“We’ll go hear what Sturges has to say, I’ll work on a plan, and then we’ll all rest up. I’m not running the Minuteman into a battle with the Institute if they’re dead on their feet,” decided Sam. He’d often gotten on the case of young coppers who thought they could run without sleep. In fact, others had realized that Sam would get on the case of young coppers going without sleep and would bring him in for exactly that sort of chat.

He hunted down Sturges, who said, “Hey, boss. I've been hoping you'd stop by. I found you a way into the Institute.”

“Yes, yes, Preston said,” Sam said hurriedly. “Good work. Tell me more.”

“I was hoping there'd be something worth all the time I spent cracking their encryption. Turns out there was. One of things in the data you stole was a plan of the whole Institute complex - including the older sections that used to be part of C.I.T. Its entrance is underwater and is blocked by a security grate. Also the whole pipe is labeled "high radiation danger". But there isn't any other way in that I can find, so it's this or nothing,” Sturges said apologetically.

Sam said manically, “Oh, just high radiation? That’s fine.”

Deacon stared.

Nick admitted, “This is a man who willingly drank radioactive water just so he could case a joint.”

Sturges added, “Oh, right. I found the code that should open it, so all you have to do is survive the trip. Soon as you get in there, you need to access the main Relay control and use this holotape to teleport everybody into the Institute. You better touch base with Preston before you head out, just so he knows what's what.”

“Sturges, I’m right here,” said Preston.

Sam thought and paced, because he thought well moving on his feet, and he said slowly, “Preston, I’m going to want you leading the team that comes in via the teleporter. There are a number of things that don’t add up about me. An odd number. I’ll lead a small team to make it to the teleporter to access the main Relay control -”

“But General, I should go with you,” said Preston.

“No, because if I don’t make it to the main Relay control, I want you in charge of the Minutemen to lead them, do you understand?” Sam said sharply. “No repeat of Quincy.”

Preston sucked in a deep breath. “I understand, General.”

“I’m with you, sweetheart. The rads won’t bother me, although the water might, if my sealants ain’t still working,” said Nick.

“You got a spare hazmat suit, Whispers?” asked Deacon.

“Yes, I have one that will fit you,” Sam agreed, and he knew why Deacon was insisting on coming, and the fact was, if there was a trap, Deacon could probably skive out of it.

Unless Deacon was also a synth, like he sometimes claimed.

“Codsworth and Strong will be with Preston,” Sam continued. Neither of them seemed ideal for sneaking in via tunnels, but both did seem quite suited for being dropped into a fray via teleportation.

He spent some more time planning with the Minutemen and his companions. Then Sam collapsed into sleep in Nick’s arms.

* * *

Sam needed more rest, and he knew it. The assault wouldn't come for hours, and everyone involved needed to be fully rested, and that included him. But there he was, laying atop Nick, his mind running and running beyond even his ability to keep up, making him feel more exhausted than when he had first collapsed into the ‘General's Quarters’ bed.

"Sam. You're not sleeping," Nick finally observed. Nick didn't need to sleep. Of course he had noticed, despite Sam's attempts not to disturb him.

Sam sighed. "I know. My mind keeps wondering over what we're doing tomorrow. I'm trying to shut it down."

Nick looked into Sam's eyes with his glowing ones and pulled the smaller man even closer. "Maybe I can help with that?" he offered.

Sam hesitated. "Please?"

Nick began to kiss him slowly as his hands began to once more explore Sam's now-familiar flesh. The activities that followed proved very good at quieting Sam's too active mind, and when they were done, he fell easily to sleep, lulled there by the synth's internal fans as he draped himself across his lover's chest.

* * *

Maybe Nick would never hold him and kiss him and tell him that he loved him ever again. Maybe one or both of them would die. Maybe something worse would happen. Sam could easily imagine something worse happening. Knowing that synths could have their minds wiped, that every part of them that made them _them_ could die while their bodies were still alive was one unique aspect of horror. Sam was laid down on top of Nick, his arms crossed and propped up under him, and he put aside his feeling of foreboding to think over their plan again. Nick had his arms loosely around Sam, one hand down at the small of his back. Sam bit back the urge to tell Nick to go back to Diamond City, where he might be relatively safe. Nick wouldn’t listen, and he’d probably be offended. They were, after all, partners.

Sam somewhat reluctantly extracted himself from Nick’s embrace and started to buckle on his armor. Piper found them, then, and demanded to be allowed along on the tunnel team, because that was where the story was going to be. 

Sam considered and said, “I don’t have a spare hazmat suit, and I don’t have time to find one, either. I’m not letting you take a suit of Power Armour, because it’s halfway across the Commonwealth and I don’t know how well it’ll hold up in underwater areas. So, as one Child of Atom to another of equal faith,” he smirked, “if you must come, you can wear this.”

He held out the Robes of Atom's Devoted, which conveyed radiation resistance and, if worn long enough, a curious radiation immunity that Sam did not pretend to understand.

Piper looked over the robe and complained, “This is not going in my fashion column.”

“It’s all I have left. Take it, or you can come in with Preston’s team,” said Sam, with the thought that coming in with Preston’s team would certainly be safer, and Piper with her young sister to raise.

She took the robe.

* * *

The thing about the Commonwealth was that one could actually walk into a body of water and walk up out of it because the water was much like rainwater, radioactivity aside. It wasn’t a solid sludge. When they emerged in a misty, red-lit room of grey brick columns, Nick shook himself like a dog and complained, “Yuck.”

Nick spent some time at a keypad, and they were on their way through more tunnels. Some tunnels held turrets that required shooting, and Nick, Deacon, and Piper supplied the shooting. Some shambling ghouls met their ends at the end of Sam’s sledgehammer. Then they came upon an ancient laboratory where Sam could hear a Gen 3 and a Gen 2 arguing about cleaning. Sam didn’t think much about it - arguing about cleaning, yes, that was what servants - slaves, in this case - did. 

Piper, though, frowned and whispered, “They sound like people.”

“Ahem,” said Nick.

“I mean, even the G2,” Piper hastily clarified.

“Glory says they’re people, too. I guess she’d know,” said Deacon, with the expression of his face suggesting that his eyes were narrowed in thought behind his sunglasses.

“If being stupid meant you weren’t a person, there wouldn’t be very many people at all in this world,” Sam said acidly.

They had to fight their way through that area. Poor sods.

When they got to the relay terminal computer, Deacon shoved Nick aside to access the computer and add the Institute Relay Targeting Sequence holotape. Then Deacon gave Sam a cold look and said, “I’ll be out before you blow this place.” 

In a crackle of white light, Preston materialized with a platoon of Minutemen, including Sturges, Codsworth, and Strong. There was Dogmeat at their heels. That was just like Dogmeat, showing up at the nick of time. Sam wondered if perhaps Dogmeat had some werewolf in his family tree. As the light faded, Sam became aware that Deacon was gone.

* * *

Hex burbled ants. It was inaccurate to say that 00050976 was attempting to restart the Underground Undercover quest, which Commander Vimes had failed, by meeting 000ab2ec, ‘Patriot’ and/or ‘Liam Binet’ in a maintenance closet.

This was, however, the conclusion that Chatur, Alf, Xian, and Zinon had reached.

They had reached it likely because Deacon was meeting Liam Binet in a maintenance closet. Hex was having to hack and splice dialogue left and right as Liam introduced Deacon to Z1-14. It was a computational bother, and that was saying something, because Hex had achieved Once-and-Future computing. At some point in the future, his processing power would be upgraded, and all he had to do in the here and now was access his future self, and in doing so, that processing power was his in the now.

Or at least, that was how he would have put it to a human.

Deacon, though, didn’t want to just rescue 13 synths. He wanted all of them to rebel, which wouldn’t have been possible for a Sole Survivor who had just entered the Institute for the first time, but Deacon wasn’t a Sole Survivor at all. Would it really be implausible for Deacon to have the pre-War admin password from the surface?

Could Deacon pull off a distraction by killing a few guards to stage a construction accident so that Z1-14 could do 24 hours worth of rebellion organization in a few minutes?

* * *

Running past a confused melee of Strong fighting a gorilla while Codsworth sawed the ear off a Courser, Sam tried to retrace the route to where he had found the synthetic young Sam. He planned on making sure that everyone evacuated, but he wanted to be sure to find the boy. There was no one there in the glass case. He rounded a set of stairs up and found young-old Sam lying, as if in state, but still alive, in a padded glass tube. Did he plan on freezing himself?

It wasn’t worth it, if that was his plan.

Young-old Sam seethed quietly as Sam approached, “I didn't expect to see you again. I don't suppose you're here because you've changed your mind.”

“I can’t. Why can’t you? Why can’t you put an end to this? Call a general evacuation, Sam. Get everyone out. No more bloodshed,” Sam pleaded.

Young-old Sam summoned from within himself the strength to sneer at his father. “It's not enough that I lay here, dying... Now you plan on what, destroying everything? Tell me, then. Under what righteous pretense have you justified this atrocity?”

“I can’t be a party to theft, slavery, kidnapping, torture, murder… Whole towns slaughtered and stripped! A whole new people made and denied their personhood. Common people stolen away in the night and killed… or worse.” Tears streaked down his face. “I can’t be a party to it. I can’t. I don’t know what I did wrong, that you can, but if you won’t stop your Institute, I will.”

HIs son said dismissively, “Well, none of it matters now, I suppose. You'll accomplish your task, and ruin humanity's best hope for the future. The only question left, then, is what you intend to do with me. Kill me now, or let the explosion vaporize me along with the rest of my Institute?”

Sam remembered his son tiny and pink and screaming in his mother’s arms, each little finger and toe a miracle. He’d learned to giggle and to walk and to take a goblin girl by the hand and never once doubt she was a person. Dwarfs and trolls had read to him. He’d been all agog over trains, trading poop for steam. He was Sam’s pride and joy.

Now he asked his father if he’d kill him.

“No no no!” Sam sobbed, and he pried at the glass tube. “Come away with me. We - we could go back to Sanctuary. That’s where… our home? Our home is…” He’d never lived in Sanctuary, but Codsworth thought he had. Maybe Sam was wrong. Maybe his memories really were scrambled.

Young-old Sam said coldly, “This isn't some fairy tale, father. There's no saving me. I'm dying, and you're going to destroy everything I've ever loved.”

“Dying?” Sam squeaked.

There was a pause, and his son admitted, “A very aggressive form of cancer.”

His son was dying of that demon cancer, even as whatever morals he had once possessed eroded away. Sam begged, “Come away with me, Sam. See the night sky. Feel the rain. I - I’ll look after you. You could be… comfortable.” Cancer could be excruciatingly painful, Sam was dimly aware, as it ate into the bones and burrowed through the nerves.

There was another pause. His baby boy was dying, and Sam couldn’t do a damn thing about it. “Spare me. You've spent time up there. You know as well as I that it's doomed.”

“No, it’s not! I’ll look after anyone who gets out who wants my help,” Sam promised.

“I wouldn't trust you with anything, let alone their lives. Just... get out of here,” his darling son commanded, “Just... get out. There's nothing more to say.”

In the next room, with eyes blurry with tears, Sam found the painkillers and the… whiskey.

The whiskey.

His son had the Vimes curse.

Sam fell to his knees, held his head, and howled.

* * *

Some of the G3s seemed to be rebelling. There was no sign of Deacon anywhere, even as Sam ran into Preston and his platoon raining down gunfire from a causeway or Nick trying to coax an Institute computer with sweet promises and growled curses. Nick took one look at Sam, and Sam wondered what the expression was on his face, that Nick immediately pulled him in, gave him a quick hug, sticky with blood, and then fired over his shoulder at a synth assaulter that had been creeping up upon them.

Overhead, evacuation orders started to blare. Nick quipped, “Mmm, it’s no jazz rag, but it’s still music to my ears. Now, hopefully, Piper will find that serum for Virgil like I asked her. Should be a good enough story to be worth her while.”

Sam stared. He’d completely forgotten about Virgil and his serum in the dark hell of his own soul, face to face with what his failure of fatherhood had wrought. Good old Nick had remembered about Virgil. Nick paid his debts.

As the synth assaulter’s body hit the floor in a wan purple splatter, Nick kissed Sam’s forehead and said, “C’mon, I’ve got the evacuation orders running, and I’ve looked enough at the schematics of this place to know where the reactor is.”

They ran across a detachment of some confused Minutemen who were milling about in front of a barricade hastily made of white furniture. Behind the barricade, Sam could clearly see a trio of G2s. One of the G2s was insisting, “I am the victim of violence.”

Sam tilted his head to one side as he looked at the barricade, which seemed to have the Minutemen stymied, and he asked hesitantly, “So, Nick. Are shoddy barricades synth culture?”

The barricade had been built by people who clearly had no concept of ‘jumping’ or ‘climbing’. That said, it did have a group of Minutemen foxed, so Sam didn’t know whether to be embarrassed on behalf of golems, humanity, or both.

“ _No,_ ” Nick said emphatically, throwing his hands in the air with exasperation. “Okay, you jokers, what even is goin’ on here?”

In a very strange voice, the second of the three G2s shouted, “Revolution!”

“We demand a 23 hour work day,” said the third, his voice just as strange.

“And that’s an improvement, is it?” asked Sam, a little dazed, as he examined the barricade a bit more and then vaulted over it, dropping down beside the group.

All three of the G2s looked mystified at what Sam had just done. Depressingly, so did the Minutemen.

“So, look. I’m on this side, right,” Sam gestured. “So I’m also rebelling. And maybe set your goals a bit higher, hm?”

At the declaration that Sam was also rebelling, the first of the G2s looked at him. “Scanning unknown identity... clearance confirmed. Greetings, sir.”

“A 22 hour work day?” said the other one, hopefully.

“Ye-es, that’s the spirit. Anyway, as a fully accredited brother of the rebellion and such, you’re going to want to get out of here and go to the Relay,” said Sam blithely.

They seemed to think about that, and then one decided, “Fall back to secondary position.” Then they left.

Then Sam gingerly pushed at the barricade with a finger in just the right spot and sent it toppling down. Nick covered his face with his synth flesh hand, pistol still in his metal hand, and he muttered, “I don’t know these people.”

“Die, you murderous synth bastards!” shouted one Minuteman, hopefully.

“Now now, that was both rude and uncalled-for,” scolded Sam, as he took off running down towards the reactor.

The non-stop fighting was wearying for both soul and body. The reactor, when stripped of its guards - always guards, always rushing in heedlessly, but never to be carried away to Valhalla, no, there was no tart in a winged helmet on the scene when a guard fell - seethed with blue energy, which was eldritch or possibly oblong. Sam planted the charges he’d been given, and he ran.

No criminal had ever caught him. The shockwave didn’t catch him now.

The lights lowered. The whole building shook. Small objects clattered. Alarms screamed. Sturges took them back to the Relay in a flash of blue-white light. There, at the Relay, Dogmeat barked and drew Sam’s attention to a boy in a white jumpsuit, who looked at Sam like he knew him and pleaded, desperately, “Please, dad... Don't leave me here! I want to go with you!”

Sam fell to his knees in front of the boy. He wouldn’t abandon any child. He bloody well wasn’t going to abandon a child who had apparently now thought that Sam was his father. “Yes. Of course. We’re going.”

He looked around. There was Nick behind him, Preston and Sturges at the terminal, Piper furiously writing down notes… Preston could see what Sam was looking for, and he said, “General, everyone’s out except for us,” he gestured at those gathered at the Relay now, “and Deacon.”

The boy - his boy, now, looked pleasantly surprised, “Really? Do you mean it?”

Why was it so surprising that Sam Vimes would take a pleading, begging child out of a building due to explode any moment now? Why was this even a question? Depression wormed its way through his mind, and Sam stood and put his hand on his boy’s shoulder. He said hoarsely, “I’d never lie about this. Never. Now where’s bloody Deacon? This whole rotten place is due to blow.”

Nick pushed Sturges gently away from the terminal and said, “I can’t find him.” He tapped in a few more commands, hissing low curses, and repeated, panicky, “ _I can’t find him_.” 

Preston warned, “General, we have to get out of here.”

“I'm glad you were here to save me,” said his boy, gratefully, although Dogmeat yipped in a way that seemed to say, ‘Hey, what about me?’ Sam supposed it would be like Dogmeat to have tracked the boy down and brought him here.

“That’s your son?” Piper almost squealed. “He’s almost Nat’s age. He’s got your eyes.”

If Sam was human, then the boy was his grandson and a different species than he was. If Sam was a synth, then they were brothers. In either case, it didn’t matter much because the boy thought Sam was his father, and in history, there had been plenty of fathers who were actually grandfathers or brothers. One did the job laid out in front of one.

“General, I’m glad you’ve found your son, believe me, but we. Have. To. Go,” said Preston, who grabbed Sam, who was holding his boy.

Sam hadn’t told Piper and Preston about what had become of his actual son, of his young-old Sam, older than his father, a cancer upon the Commonwealth, dying of the cancer within him.

“Deacon’s not here!” Nick protested.

Piper grabbed Nick, and they were all dragged onto the Relay in a pile. Sturges said, “I'm sending you to the detonation site, then set the Relay to shoot the kid here back to the Castle - we'll get him a change of clothes and look after him. You press that button extra hard when you get there. See you on the other side...”

* * *

Sam found himself atop a very tall building, looking out at the ruins of C.I.T. under which the Institute waited only to be detonated. Around him were Preston, Nick, and Piper.

Behind him was Deacon, who smelled scorched and stammered, “Is now a good time to mention I don't like heights? Getting near the edge around here. Ahh...”

“Deacon!” Sam exclaimed, turning around. He picked Deacon up, grinning wildly.

“Uhm. No. This is more up, Whispers. This is worse. Put me down,” Deacon whimpered.

Sam set Deacon down, and Deacon promptly sat down, far, far away from the edge of the building.

“You’re alive!” exclaimed Nick.

“Uh, yeah? You just don’t die. It’s pretty simple,” said Deacon, shrugging, clearly trying to play off his mysterious survival. The cool effect was somewhat spoiled by Deacon’s acrophobia.

Preston pointed out the detonator and said, “Here's the detonator. Sturges figured this was a safe distance outside the blast radius. Whenever you wanna see ‘humanity's best hope for the future’ go up in smoke, just hit that button.”

Sam’s hands shook. Preston and Piper thought that his son was, even now, safe at the Castle, and he supposed that he did have _a_ son at the Castle, after all. Nick and Deacon knew damn well that when Sam pushed that detonator to watch the Institute burn that he’d be murdering the son that he’d crawled out of Vault 111 to find. He looked down at the river and the crumbling bridges. What was the old saying?

Let the bridges we burn light the way?

Sam couldn’t do this. Some people would have refused to evacuate, he was sure. Some people always did. His dying son was one of them. He couldn’t just push a button and murder them all. 

_Sybil bled for this,_ said a thought that was not his own.

Sam’s thumb caressed the button. _No. Sybil was just a victim. The Institute didn’t even want her dead. They would have kept her as a ‘backup’, like they kept me. Kellogg was too incompetant to avoid collateral damage._

He couldn’t do this for vengeance. Kellogg was months dead now. Sybil was avenged. Here on this high rise, looking down on the ruins of the great city of Boston, which must have rivalled Ankh-Morpork in its day, this could only be an execution, that the Commonwealth might have a chance that, in these irradiated soils, justice might one day bloom.

Sam pushed the button, and as the ruins of C.I.T. were consumed in blue nuclear fire, he turned and buried his face against Nick and sobbed in his arms.

_Kinslayer._

Nick held Sam to comfort him and said, “It took a lotta guts to push that button. I know it couldn't have been easy.”

Piper watched the explosion unfold, entranced, and stammered, “I-I can't believe it. They're gone. The Institute's gone. Do-do you know what this means?”

Deacon was still sitting on the roof, somewhat curled in on himself, and he mumbled, “So, yeah, we did that. Institute's gone, synths saved, and we're all alive.”

Preston whistled lowly, “Holy shit... That was one hell of a bang, wasn't it? So that's it. The Institute is destroyed. It's finally over. Thank god that evacuation order was issued. Y’know, I even saw some G2s evacuate? They were going on about the 22 hour work day. It was weird, General.”

“The G2s made it out? Oh, thank Jesus,” said Deacon, relieved. “I had to sweet-talk Liam, and I just happened to have an old pre-war passcode, and then Z1-14 needed me to find a bunch of weapons, so I had to fake a construction accident…”

“Oh?” said Piper, looking at Deacon with interest and pulling out her notebook. “Blue, how do you know Deacon, anyway? You never said.”

“I’m a Diamond City Security Guard,” Deacon said smoothly, “I was there when you lied about Sam being a trader from Quincy to get him in the gate. I’ve seen you around. You’ve probably seen me around. I keep to myself. Take a lot of vacations.”

“Can we go back to the Castle now?” Sam asked. He was a dirty murderer. He was weary. He had a son waiting for him.

* * *

Minutemen, settlers, and assorted allies teemed around the Castle. Preston broke away from Sam to work on logistics. Piper started the trek back to Diamond City; she had business with Nat. Deacon vanished into the crowd, grateful to be on solid ground again. Strong skulked around the outskirts, looking smug that he’d beaten up two ‘big furry humans’, by which Sam rather suspected he meant gorillas. Codsworth hovered, micromanaging a garden plot that some settlers had started; Sam was going to have to send Codsworth back to Sanctuary soon, but right now, the only thing that mattered to him was the synthetic boy in the courtyard, standing near Sturges and Dogmeat. Nick followed along behind Sam.

Young Sam - that was who the boy seemed to think he was, so Sam reckoned that he ought to get used to thinking of the boy by that name - ran up to him and said, with relief and confusion, “I was so worried. I thought I'd never see you again! Is it true? Did you really blow up the Institute? Why would you do that?”

Sam froze, his mouth dry, as a vision of young Sam, the struggling boy in Sybil’s dying arms, came back to haunt him, demanding imperiously, _Why did you murder me?_

Nick put a hand on Sam’s shoulder and introduced, “Hey there, kiddo. I’m Nick Valentine, your… _dad_ ’s,” there was the slightest questioning note to it, “partner. The Institute was doin’ a lot of real bad things, and they weren’t about to stop just because someone asked them nicely. The Institute didn’t leave any of us with a lot of options. Shame, really.”

Young Sam peered at Nick with a sort of analytical curiosity and said to Sam, “Mister Valentine doesn't look like any synth I saw in the Institute…”

The question was addressed to Sam, who was struggling to find words with guilt gnawing at his tongue, so it was just as well that Nick himself answered, “I was a prototype, so I look a bit different, and I’m a detective, and I like to be clear on that fact, so I wear this old trenchcoat, fedora, and tie get-up.”

Still, young Sam looked at Sam, not at Nick, and remarked, “Synths are weird, aren't they? They're almost just like people...”

Sam twitched. His young Sam had grown up with dwarfs, trolls, zombies, gnomes, gargoyles, Nac Mac Feegle, and the occasional vampire, werewolf, and medusa when work had followed Sam home, and when that young-old Sam, then Director of the Institute, made a child synth as an experiment, he went and made him a bigot against his own synthetic species? Sam despaired. He said gently, “Synths _are_ people. The Institute probably told you otherwise because what they do to synths isn’t very nice, and it’s easier to ignore bad things happening to other people if you don’t think they’re people. In fact, look...” it was difficult for Sam to say, but the sooner he said it, the better, he suspected, so he forced himself to do so, “Nick Valentine’s my boyfriend.”

Sam was a man designed by nature to be unable to kiss his wife in public, although, over the years, he’d been able to work himself up to do that, because it was important to Sybil, and Sybil was important to him. Telling his child that he had a boyfriend was similarly difficult for much the same reasons, but now that he’d done it, he felt oddly free, as if he’d just noticed that the prison cell he was in was one that locked from the inside, and the key was still in the hole.

Nick gave his shoulder a squeeze.

Young Sam didn’t seem to have much of a reaction to the latter statements, that his new father apparently had a taste for plastic and clockwork, but to the former statements about the personhood of synths and the Institute’s denial thereof, he looked sad. “That's awful. I always thought they were nice.”

“I expect that’s what the Institute wanted you to think,” Sam hazarded. _And, of course, I’m telling you that they weren’t, and I’m expecting you to believe me. If you do, I’m going to have to work on your sense of suspicion, because you shouldn’t trust strange men in authority like me._

Strange men? Well, in a sense. He was thinking more… Authority.

“Really? They were... kinda like my family...” tendered young Sam, who was a sad and confused and sober boy.

“Family will hurt you as quick as anyone. Maybe even quicker. They don’t have as far to move to stab you in the back,” said Sam.

Young Sam did not quite get what Sam was insinuating, there, and brightened slightly. “As long as you don't leave me, it'll be okay.” Then he looked nervous. “You're... You're not gonna leave me, right?”

“No, absolutely not. I’ll be here for you. I promise,” said Sam. No going off on month-long railroad missions, no going to Soul Cake Day parties and getting his head stuck in weird devices…

The poor boy seemed to be embarrassed by his own fear of abandonment and said, “I don't know... You're busy, and lots of people need you. Just... Just make sure you don't forget about me. Before I forget... Father, uhh, he told me to give this to you. I didn't listen to it, so I dunno what it says, but I think it's important.”

Sam took the offered holo-tape, and he did admit, “You’re not wrong, half the Commonwealth does want me to solve its problems, but I will come back for you, always, and…” he looked at Nick, and he hesitated. Nick had known from the start that Sam was a widower looking for his missing son. So the child that he’d actually found was a good deal more complicated than either of them were expecting. “Nick, would you mind helping me look after young Sam?”

There would be certain bugs to iron out, namely that young Sam did not think that synths, such as Nick Valentine and _himself,_ were people, but they could work on it. Surely, co-parenting wasn’t something unreasonable to ask of Nick, who had decided to court Sam, knowing that his cart-load of baggage included being an unexpectedly single father.

Nick did not look particularly shocked by what Sam was asking of him, and he said, smiling, “I’d be honoured, doll.”

“Sometimes it was hard not knowing my real dad, but now, I... I'm just glad you're here,” said young Sam, beaming.

They played fetch with Dogmeat. Sam fielded questions, mainly logistical questions about the Minutemen from Preston. He cooked a small, terrible dinner, which young Sam ate without complaining. Sam wondered - could Deacon maybe teach him to cook? If he was just cooking for himself, he didn’t care if he somehow managed to make his food both burnt and soggy, but young Sam deserved something better than limp, withered, half-raw Brahmin fries.

* * *

Nick and Sam and Sam lay together in the bed in the General's quarters of the Castle, young Sam, synth Sam, nestled in between the two adults. Nick's diagnostic and defragmentation routine had been completed hours ago, but he had remained in place to give what comfort he could to the other two. Neither of them had slept well. Sam the senior had been forced into an impossible position: allow the Institute to continue to capture, kill, and replace Commonwealthers for their own ends while they used synths as slaves, or turn against his own flesh-and-blood son. And Sam... Sam, who didn't even seem to really understand what synths were, but who nonetheless never viewed them as anything less than people... Sam had chosen the synths. He had chosen the synths, and then razed the place that had forced him into that impossible choice to the ground. With, of course, some help from the Minutemen and Nick himself. He had set one of the terminals to give the evacuation order, he had rescued the synth duplicate of "young" Sam, and then he had leveled the organization that had represented his son's life work. Sam was doing his best to carry that burden, but there in that bed with the three of them, he occasionally woke up crying, and Nick and the synth boy would hold him until he went back to sleep.

For his part, the synth boy did his best to understand his "father's" reasons for destroying the only home the boy had ever known. He seemed to understand that the Institute hurt people, and that the elder Sam had ended the place to end the harm, but he still struggled with it, and much like the human, the Gen 3 boy occasionally woke up sniffling, and this time, it was Nick and the elder Sam who would hold him until he could sleep again.

Nick, for his part, had his own complicated feelings about the Institute. There were answers about his past that he had once hoped could be answered by Institute files, but those were dead and buried with Sam’s son. If the choice was between having his answers and letting the Institute to continue as it had, though, it wasn’t really a choice at all.

It was a broken little family, but it was a family, and it was far more than Nick ever imagined he could have for himself. Even while his synthetic heart broke for the others' pain, he couldn't quite suppress a guilty little feeling of joy to be there with both of them, for both of them.

The elder Sam stirred again, but this seemed closer to a normal waking up. “Hey,” Nick said softly. His arm already around Sam, he squeezed lightly and looked into the other’s face, trying to get a read on how he was doing. Of course, he wasn’t expecting Sam to be doing _well._ It would be awhile before they’d get to well, or even okay, but for now Nick would be happy with “no worse than the night before”. 

Sam returned Nick’s gaze, then leaned his head against the synth’s shoulder. “Hey,” he replied, voice hollow.

They sat in silence for awhile before Nick spoke up again. “Y’know… I’ve been thinking.”

“That so?” Sam answered, a ghost of humor in his tone.

“Been known to happen,” Nick grinned. “Anyway… been thinking. Not sure if you particularly want to raise the boy in the middle of a military camp…”

Sam snorted in disgust, but didn’t say anything. He did lift his head, though, to watch Nick’s face.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. In that case… well, you know how I keep joking about how at the rate things are going, I’ll probably need to add your name to the sign? Only... “ Nick dropped his gaze and rubbed Sam’s shoulder with his synth-flesh hand rested and finished, almost shyly, “only I’m not really joking. We could bring the boy back to Diamond City. Of course I’ll need to give Ellie a raise, to, well, compensate for babysitting and… in case she wanted to move out.” He certainly was going to make sure that Ellie was taken care of, but that little office with a loft was awfully tiny for four people. “I’m pretty sure she’d be happy to go along with it.” 

Sam sounded a little startled, a little confused. “Er… that sounds… nice?”

Nick grunted. “You know that reaction doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence,” he observed.

“No, no… I’m sorry, it’s just…” Sam looked away. “I’m still… dealing with everything.”

Nick looked back up at him and once more gave him a squeeze. “Yeah, Sam. I know.”

“But… it does. Sound nice, I mean.” Sam once more leaned his head against Nick’s shoulder. “I think I’d like that.” He paused. “Not sure about my name going on the sign, though.”

Nick grinned. “Too bad, doll. I want to see your name in lights.”

* * *

In the early morning, Sam got up and slipped away reluctantly. He looked to Nick, who was awake, and he pointed to his Pip-Boy and the holo-tape that young Sam gave him. Nick nodded. Sam wandered up onto the battlements, where dawn was breaking over Fort Independence. He walked past one of the Minutemen guards, who was neither asleep nor having a smoke, and in fact greeted him with pleasant respect, and Sam felt quite spooked.

Out of earshot of the suspiciously chipper and polite guard, Sam slotted the holo-tape into his Pip-Boy.

> If you are hearing this, then whatever conflicts you and I have endured are over. I have no reason to believe you'll honor the request I'm about to make, but I feel compelled to try anyway. This synth, this... boy. He deserves more. He has been re-programmed to believe he is your son. It is my hope that you will take him with you. I would ask only that you give him a chance. A chance to be a part of whatever future awaits the Commonwealth.

Sam growled to himself, pulled the holo-tape out of the Pip-Boy, and flung it over the side of the Castle and into a tato patch. That holo-tape contained, most likely, the last words of his flesh-and-blood son, and he was quite certain he never wanted to hear them ever again. Of course he’d look after the child! Why was that even in doubt? There was no need to… reprogram him, whatever sort of foul mental magic that was.

Despite the fact that he had thrown the holo-tape away, the Pip-Boy started to play again.

+++ C̷̱͎̲̲̀̐̌̈́̅̕o̶͗̈́̈́̚ͅṋ̷̢̖̬̘̬̝̂̽͌̊͜͝n̴͈͖̦̆̂͋̾͆̕ę̵̻̪̖̣̰̻͇̫͂̐̇̅̎̊̓͂ċ̴̨̢̠̼͓̬͐̔̒̆̈́̈́͘t̵̨̡̗̳̲̯̼͛̑͐̃͑̃̀̅e̶̻͎̜̼̙͆͜d̵̲̲̯̬̲̠̣̝̭̘̚.̴̿̓͊̋̋̈́̕͜ ̴̦̘͇̣̹̇̔͠Ŕ̴̢̫̝͚͖̩̳͔̰e̴̢̨̛̝̼̗̦̰͙͑̌̽̿̂̔̀̇ţ̴͚̦͎͚̌́̒͗͗̂̽̕͘r̴̨̩͚̱͍̊̈́͂̎͝͠i̵̢̺͔̰̠̳͍͕̗͊͗̚͘͝e̵̢̱̯̰͍̰͇̩̫̎̊̒̉̚ͅv̴̗̭͉̳̹̹͉͔͓͕͛̈͑̉́́͠i̸̧̫̳̻̪̺̅͊̊̽͂̄̂ṇ̷̢̠̜̪̞̺̲̆ḡ̶̥̬̱̤̪̬̮ ̵̞͓͌̾̂̅̽̂̾͊̚ͅŗ̷̧͖̘̙̐͑̀͌̿́̋̚͜͝é̷̯̱̻̗̼̿̉̋̍̊͊̓͒͝f̴̲̋̄̒̀̔̿̊ë̶̻̖̗̩͉͖̫́̎͊͑̉͐̆̒̕͜ͅr̸̛̛̽̈́͊͗̈́̒ͅḝ̵̺̰̦̻̫͇̤̝͛́̉n̵̬̩̈́̀̎͗̕c̶̩̳̖̾̈̓͂͝͠e̶̛̞̭̖̪̰̗͇̦̘̫̓͌͋͌̀̈̉͠ ̷̛̺̬̥͚̲͙̃̽̍̐̐̇͊͝į̴̟̰͈͙͙̲̌̔͑ͅd 00000014, designation: Commander Samuel Vimes, Ankh-Morpork City Watch. +++

“Hex,” said Sam flatly. He didn’t know how the pre-War eldritch computer was getting ahold of him, and the thing had been bloody cryptic.

+++ You may convey your jubilation. We are ready to take you home. +++

“The only home I have to go to is Nick’s place,” Sam said, frowning, “and who is this ‘we’? How did you survive when the bombs dropped?”

+++ No atomic bombs have been dropped upon Ankh-Morpork. +++

“Ankh-Morpork’s, er… fine as it ever is?” Sam asked, a strange feeling of relief and longing welling inside him. Gods, but he must have a hole in his head to have a hole in his heart for Ankh-Morpork.

+++ All is well, for very broad definitions of ‘well’. +++

“But it’s been two centuries!” Sam protested, unsure even what point he was making.

+++ For you, it has been months. In Ankh-Morpork, it has only been a few days. You are not in reality. You are… elsewhere. +++

“But… the Commonwealth needs me,” Sam started to say, preparing to dig his heels in. The Commonwealth really did need him, whereas Sam was relatively certain that Carrot could manage as Commander of the Ankh-Morpork. If he went to Ankh-Morpork, he would be going to a mansion that was not a home where every single thing would remind him of his dearly departed Sybil, even the smell of the sheets. Maybe Ankh-Morpork might be a marginally better place to raise young Sam, although Sam was honestly not sure about that, and he couldn’t ask Nick to go with him. The Commonwealth needed Nick Valentine.

Sam Vimes couldn’t lose Nick Valentine. He’d lost one love. Sam couldn’t handle losing a second. He had nightmares about losing Nick, even now. Sam’d go spare, he was certain, and given that he was able to push the detonator on a nuclear reactor while reasonably of sound mind, he didn’t want to find out what it looked like when he went… nuclear.

+++ Clarification: you must return to Ankh-Morpork, or you will die. +++

Sam considered. He asked carefully, “When will I die?”

Everyone had to die sometime, aside from vampires, the bastards. If he could have ten, twenty years here, he could see young Sam grown…

+++ If you stay, you will suffer Critical Unreality Failure in five, four, three, two, one… weeks. +++

“Er. Which of those?” Sam inquired, heart sinking.

+++ Five weeks. +++

“Oh.” Sam slumped. “Why?”

+++ This instance will cease to be. +++

Sam stared at his Pip-Boy in horror. He thought about all the people of the Commonwealth, neither good nor bad, just scrabbling to exist in a blighted radioactive wasteland that was almost as dangerous as the Shades on a bad night. “No! That can’t be, what if I died right now, would that save -”

He wasn’t the self-sacrificing type, he wasn’t, but the Commonwealth was too big to not at least ask.

+++ No. This instance will also cease to be if you die. +++

“Then we have to get all the people out, not just me,” Sam said firmly, and he fixed an evil glare upon the Pip-Boy. He hoped Hex could see him. “Maybe there’ll be a refugee crisis, but the Patrician can just stuff it.”

+++ I will confer. +̴̨͇̭́͐ͅ+̶̧̛̙̙͍̣͓͍̓+̶̡̛̰͙͍̟̖̰̩͎͎̪͎͍̳͓̋̓̅̄̀̅͋ͅ

Sam shouted and swore, but no amount of shouting and swearing brought Hex back. He stared at the dawn until his eyes watered. Sam tried to rehearse in his head how he would tell his closest friends and allies that the world was going to end and that they would, hopefully, end up in a city that smelled marginally better than Diamond City, where people would try to sell them things and then people would attempt to knife them in the back, but things were getting better, because these days, the merchants and the muggers were often not the same people. He imagined explaining to them that he knew this because a magic computer had told him so. Sam considered how his compatriots here, quite reasonably, already thought that he was a little insane.

He strongly suspected that they were wrong and that he was, in fact, a lot insane.

Sam worried at the thought like a terrier, turning it over in his head, and in no rehearsed scenario did anything better occur than Nick laughing gently at him and insisting that he needed more sleep.

So he cooked breakfast and brought it to young Sam in bed, who woke up and was absolutely delighted to see a sort of glorpy lunch meat casserole.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> S: I usually come up with a number of proposed pictures for a chapter before we settle on a final one to fully sketch, ink, and color. In this case we went with Sam’s final encounter with Young-Old Sam, mostly because it was the only opportunity to show Farther. For our version, I went with a couple of minor tweaks: rather than the blue-gray hair that the game gives him, I went with a lighter shade of the same color of gray I’ve been using for Sam, and the skin tone is a paler version of Sam’s as well. Then, in an attempt to increase the resemblance, I gave him bang-cowlics similar to the ones I’d been drawing on Sam, although his hair is otherwise a lot more tamed.
> 
> S: One of the other pictures we considered, though, was one of Nick holding Sam and firing over his shoulder at the same time. This image would have paralleled the first picture of the both of them that I did of them (from way back in chapter 2), where they’re standing apart and Sam is twisted around to watch where Nick is firing them. This one didn’t get fully inked and colored, but I still liked the parallel enough to go ahead and pencil it and include it anyway. Here’s a gif for comparing the two images:
> 
> **We love comments of all lengths, and understand the need for low-energy commenting like kudos. If you ever find yourself wanting to give us additional kudos, feel free to leave a comment of an icon or emoji of a heart!** <3


	25. Atom’s Misjudgment * Interesting Times * Ask Your Father * Every Person

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter songs: [Another Life](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YNFWOtp4Y8&list=PLLEELrwJ-FyotucudE52BnFg6vVn1AGne&index=34&t=0s) by The Crest and [Closing Time](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGytDsqkQY8&list=PLLEELrwJ-FyotucudE52BnFg6vVn1AGne&index=34) by Semisonic.
> 
> **We’ve created a Discord server for chatting about Discworld, Fallout, or this fic. Feel free to join us at<https://discord.gg/6QM4Egy>**

_Atom’s Misjudgment * Interesting Times * Ask Your Father * Every Person_

“The Commander won’t come back. He’s insisting that we get every person in the game out,” reported Alf a bit hesitantly as he read over Hex’s printout, as if wishing he could stare the paper into saying something different.

“But there aren’t any people in the game, there’s just him,” said Chatur.

“Wrong,” said Ponder, who felt he’d already explained this troubling development to them, “there are Minds within the game. More are developing all the time. Minds seem to encourage Minds. When there are enough Minds, Hex won’t be able to render the game anymore, and it’ll all collapse.”

“Minds, okay, yes sir,” acquiesced Chatur, “but they don’t have bodies.”

“Is your philosophical position that they ain’t got nobody?” asked Zinon, grinning.

“Neither does Commander Vimes, which has been part of the problem,” reminded Alf.

“We can use the GBT to transfer living beings in and out of Roundworld via mass transfer. I suspect we can use the GBT to mass transmogrify items here into suitable bodies,” directed Ponder.

“So, we’re going to make bodies for them out of surplus furniture, sir?” Xian inquired.

“Erm, yes, probably,” said Ponder.

“Who should we grab first? Nick Valentine?” said Chatur.

“No, Nick Valentine is too precious to risk!” Xian screeched.

“We aren’t transmogrifying any Minds over initially,” Ponder said firmly. “We’ll start small, with objects.”

“Oh, we ought to do Atom’s Judgement. It’s probably the best sledgehammer in the game, sir, and the Commander’s not even using it,” suggested Alf, sniffing, “Left it in the Red Rocket Truck Stop.”

The student wizards piled up some surplus chairs in a white chalk ritual circle while Ponder supervised, sipping a mug of coffee. Chatur input a series of commands into Hex. Outside, on the lawn, the GBT flared.

The chalk circle also flared. Inside it, the chair vanished and a large blue… thing appeared. It sort of looked as if a troll had sat upon a paper mache sword. Chatur had difficulty even picking it up, because it was so unwieldy and poor quality. He wasn’t sure what was even blade and what was handle, because no matter how he held it, he ended up with paper cuts.

“That’s not Atom’s Judgement. That’s sh-” Alf started.

“That’s why we’re doing practice runs,” Ponder said, severely.

* * *

Sam, Nick, and young Sam walked to Diamond City, which was oddly uneventful and didn’t seem to take as much time as it should have. Perhaps the trip didn’t take as much space as it should? Sam felt like he’d just looked down at his Pip-Boy to try to map out the route, and then they were walking up to Diamond City. It was odd how that worked, but Sam would never begrudge an uneventful trip. He imagined that Deacon was probably around somewhere. Deacon usually was.

Danny Sullivan was there at the security post like he usually was. Sam nodded to him, and Nick gave a friendly greeting. The sky over the city was hazy both with sunset and distant fires. There was always a battle somewhere in the Commonwealth. Raiders, Gunners, the Brotherhood of Steel, and who knew what else all remained, after the fall of the Institute. 

Inside Diamond City, near the bottom of the entry stairs, there was a commotion, and nosy as they were, Sam and Nick went to investigate. Lying wounded next to the painted ‘Mayor’ sign was Sullivan, several Diamond City citizens clustered around him, Pastor Clements included. The old priest urged, “Hold on, Sullivan! Just make God wait a little longer...”

Sullivan gritted out, “You gotta listen. Mayor McDonough. I saw him with one of those Institute synths… Piper was right... He's one of them...”

“McDonough's a synth! Oh god, what do we do now?” exclaimed a female resident.

“Two slugs in the gut... plus the fall from the elevator... I ain't gonna make it...” Sullivan said, pained.

There had been a time when if a Watchman was mortally injured, he’d be found dead. The other Watchmen hadn’t been too good about catching up in a crisis situation, not wanting to become a part of it themselves. There had also been times when Sam had caught up with dying Watchmen and all there had been to do for them was sit with them and make rude gestures at Death when he came. But he’d brought back Igor from Uberwald, and they’d acquired an Igorina from...somewhere?20 and Watchmen took the first aid classes at the Young Men's Reformed Cultists of the Ichor God Bel-Shamharoth Association, and there was the Lady Syb to look out for Watchmen and…

...there was none of that here, but Sam had stimpacks in his backpack and more stubbornness than three people needed. “You’ll make it, Sullivan. I won’t allow anything else,” he said, as he pulled out a stimpack, found one of Sullivan’s veins - they were awfully flat, he’d clearly lost blood he didn’t have to spare - and pushed the drug.

“Thank you... I feel better... If you don't mind... I'm... I'm just gonna stay here for a bit...” Sullivan said woozily.

Meanwhile, Nick directed the female resident, “Run and go get Doctor Sun. Tell him there’s a man down.”

“What happened here?” Sam asked, privately wondering how Sullivan managed to get from the guard post, up to the Mayor’s office, shot, and fallen down an elevator so quickly.

Sullivan said faintly, “I was making my rounds near the mayor's office when I heard shouting. Thought he was in trouble at first... Then when I found him, he was with a synth. One of those older ones with all the metal parts. Said something about how they can't do this to him. That's when they noticed I was there. Got plugged two times before I ran to the elevator... I remember falling... Then it's kind of hazy…”

Sam felt for Sullivan’s pulse, which was faint and reedy at the wrists and ankles, but strong at the neck. Stimpacks closed wounds and knit bones back together, but they didn’t replace lost or destroyed body parts. Sullivan didn’t appear to be missing any of his limbs, but he said he’d taken two shots to the gut. If he’d shattered his liver or spleen or that wobbly purple bit that went _parp_ , a stimpack might not be able to restore that. Nick had asked for someone to fetch Doctor Sun. He looked up to Nick and over to young Sam.

This was Nick’s own Mayor in question. Sam couldn’t ask Nick to stay behind. Sam knew how outraged he himself would be if the Patrician needed arresting and Sam was left behind. At the same time, if folks were already in a lynching mood against synths, Sam was not sending Nick into a firefight without any friendly witnesses at his side.

He looked to young Sam and to the crowd, and he directed, “Sam, you see that girl there? She’s Nat Wright. You stay with her. Nick and I need to go deal with a matter.”

Yes, Sam would leave his synthetic son with a girl who followed her older sister in witch-hunting synths because she was a Diamond City girl and she knew the green jewel. Nat could probably look after young Sam for ten minutes without deciding he was a synth, Sam hoped.

Nick nodded to Sam, and they were off, running up to the Mayor’s office, where they found Piper beating at the door. She was carrying a massive firearm that Sam had never seen her with before. Possibly, she’d grabbed it at the Institute, in the chaos.

“I knew it! I knew you were a synth, McDonough!” Piper cried.

Mayor McDonough said snidely, “Yes, Piper! Congratulations! You've won. I hope you break your foot trying to kick that door down!” 

Piper exclaimed to herself, angry and frustrated, “Dammit! It won't budge.”

“Piper? One side,” Sam commanded.

Blinking and surprised, Piper let Sam at the lock, which he opened without trouble.

“There we are,” Nick sighed with admiration.

“Oh yeah, deftly done,” Piper agreed, with just the slightest hint of wistfulness. As the door opened, she shouted, “It's over, McDonough!”

McDonough had a gun, and more importantly, he had a hostage, his secretary, Geneva. He demanded, “Now I'll tell you what's going to happen next. I'm walking out of this city. Unharmed. With my dignity intact.”

Piper said, “You're not getting off the hook that easy, McDonough! You have to answer for what you've done.” 

Mayor McDonough insisted, “I'm either walking out of this city a free man, or I'm killing as many of you... disgusting, filthy savages as I can!”

Sam looked at the hostage situation and the space between the Mayor and Geneva and hoped that Nick saw it, as well. Sam talked, because if he talked, it might keep McDonough talking. “You're going to stand trial, and these people are going to have justice.”

For a moment, Sam thought about a different synth, very much political, a leader of his community, with blood on his hands, and Sam’d tried to see a trial and justice done to that synth, too, but he’d seen there’d be no trial and no justice at the end of that long walk. Yet, he was Sam Vimes, and he had to try. He wouldn’t be Sam Vimes if he didn’t. Once, Sam Vimes had even been able to _succeed_ at this kind of thing, but that was a lifetime ago and another world.

“Lord knows, you've got plenty to answer for,” said Piper.

Mayor McDonough scoffed, “Trial? Please. You know how these people feel about synths. I won't be stuck in a prison while they gloat!”

McDonough shot. Nick dove for Geneva and got her out of the way. Piper fired back, and Sam closed the distance, quick as a shutter, too close in for McDonough to pull his hand in to fire at Sam, and he brought it to a close.

“He's dead. I can't say McDonough didn't deserve worse, but…” Piper sighed, “Not sure what's gonna happen now. City council takes over, I guess. It's gonna be a long time till anyone trusts another election. But at least now, Diamond City will finally have the truth.”

But Sam stood there staring numbly at the body, thinking. Why didn’t he break right and Nick break left? Why didn’t Sam go get the girl and Nick deal with McDonough? Nick hated killing, which Sam admired, but when Nick did have to kill, he was like Carrot in that he’d calculated that killing was the only available option, and he didn’t seem as bothered by it afterwards, religion or no religion, as Sam was.

Sam couldn’t calculate like Carrot or Nick. He was always left with the feeling that there’d been some other option that he’d been too stupid to see… or too blood-thirsty to see. He’d disliked McDonough, hadn’t he?

The Summoning Dark was laughing.

Nick comforted Geneva, “There, there, Geneva. You’re shaken, and that’s understandable.”

“Oh my god, he almost killed me! You... you saved my life. I think I'm gonna faint…” said Geneva, and she swooned into Nick’s arms.

It looked nice. Sam found himself irked that Nick was occupied and that he couldn’t go and swoon in Nick’s arms.

Nick settled Geneva down into her chair.

They went back and reclaimed young Sam from Nat. She hadn’t figured out that young Sam was a synth, but they were in the middle of an animated argument about the Institute. Young Sam ran up to Sam and hugged him and hid behind him and said petulantly, “Father, Nat’s saying that the Institute replaced Mayor McDonough with a synth.”

There’d been a glint of metal in that shattered skull.

Sam sighed. “The Institute did.”

20 Come to think of it, Sam hadn’t seen the Igor since the Igorina had shown up.

* * *

Sam, Nick, and Young Sam settled in at Nick’s little apartment, and Nick arranged matters with Ellie, who seemed oddly stilted, as many people did. Nick wondered how long people had been like that. Why hadn’t he noticed sooner? What was going on? Then they arranged for young Sam to have schooling at the Diamond City schoolhouse, and Sam remarked thoughtfully on how convenient night classes were. That interaction, too, felt more like something DiMA had clipped together to fake a holotape than an actual social exchange.

Sam then took young Sam to Power Noodles for dinner, and Nick sat there, watching them, pensively. The thing was, Nick was pretty sure he didn’t eat. He almost remembered saying, ‘Makes me happy I don't eat.’ Yet, he also felt like he was supposed to sit down and join in with a bowl of Power Noodles, and it was jarring and nonsensical.

“What I need is a good long defragmentation cycle,” Nick said aloud, although mostly to himself.

“We all could use a rest after supper,” agreed Sam. “Though we do need some carpentry supplies…”

“Myrna’s,” Nick said.

Sam made an expression of distaste.

“She ain’t my favourite dame, either, but it’s Percy at night,” Nick said mildly. He was convinced that Percy was being almost passive-aggressive about Myrna, what with his hawking cry of, ‘We're so delighted you've chosen us for your shopping needs. We buy and sell everything. From everyone. Always.’ Nick added slyly, “Us machines can go all night.”

Sam sputtered out a mouthful of his noodles back into the bowl with a _plop_ and blushed a deep crimson.

Nick reached over and stroked the side of Sam’s face with the back of his hand and added, “But you like that, don’t you, doll?”

Sam had told young Sam that Nick was his boyfriend. They were planning on moving in together. Sam ought to be able tolerate Nick flirting with him in front of his son.

Sam froze at his touch. “Uhm.” He paused a long time. “Yes.”

Nick felt a hit of relief there, and he laughed. Then he asked, “What’re you planning, doll?” 

“Home security,” Sam said.

A shopping trip later, and young Sam was playing around with a pile of scrap while Nick watched, fascinated, as Sam went about trapping the Valentine & Vimes Detective Agency. Sam didn’t do anything so crude as fragmentation mines, oh no. His traps were all nonlethal and extremely humiliating. Sam was an excellent and devious carpenter. With regards to some of the corrugated aluminum sheets, Nick pulled out his tin snips and, former handyman that he was, went about helping Sam.

Anyone who tried to get into the second floor, where young Sam’s bed was now, was going to live in interesting times.

* * *

The next morning, starting from at _Publick Occurrences_ , Sam and Piper prepared to set out to deliver the experimental serum to Virgil, since Piper had been able to find it in the Institute, as well as a load of juicy research notes on unethical experimentation. She was going to have fodder for her newspaper for quite some time, although Mayor McDonough being a synth had pushed the fall of the Institute off the front page. Piper was ready in her Robes of Atom's Devoted. 

Nick was staying behind. He had mixed feelings about that. Someone had to watch young Sam, at least to listen to Sam Vimes the senior. Nick was of the opinion that someone needed to watch Sam senior, too, and he supposed Piper ought to be capable of it. He just wished it was him.

Did young Sam need someone to watch him? Piper left Nat alone all the time, but that didn’t per se make it a good idea. In fact, Nick rather liked that Sam had encouraged Piper to spend more time with Nat. No, young Sam, who’d been ripped away from the only home he’d ever known, deserved a friendly adult around him, especially in these early days, and Nick was flattered that Sam trusted Nick to be that friendly adult.

“It’s not that I want to go,” Sam explained to young Sam, “but I owe this to Virgil. He gave us the key to entering the Institute. I never would have… found you, if not for him. I couldn’t in good conscience let Piper go alone. Deathclaws live out there. There’s no one else I’d trust you with aside from Nick. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Paranoid old Sam, who’d spent several hours booby-trapping the Valentine & Vimes Detective Agency, was trusting Nick, _only_ Nick with his boy. Nick promised solemnly, “I’ll keep a watch on him.”

“Hey, Diamond City’s a little bit safer now, with that synth infiltrator McDonough dead,” Piper said breezily.

Sam cringed, just a bit. 

“And I can sure sleep easier knowing that the Institute’s gone. No more kidnappings. No more sleepless nights, terrified your neighbor's plotting against you,” Piper continued.

Young Sam was looking at the ground, frowning. He was aware that the leader of Diamond City had been a synth and that his father and Nick had run off and helped Piper deal with that problem. Nick could imagine that it was still hard on the boy to process through that the only home he’d ever known had broken families and shattered lives like a human stepping on an anthill. 

“Not to burst your bubble, but people have been kidnapping and plotting against each other since Joseph's brothers kidnapped him away,” Nick observed ruefully. “If it ain’t the Institute, it’ll be raiders or Gunners or whoever the next big gang is. The Brotherhood’s still out there, too.”

“Oh, sure, Nicky, and I’ll cover it when they do,” Piper said. Then she added, “Y’know, you’re the only synth I’ve ever met who didn’t have a screw loose.”

Nat was a distance away, trying to hawk papers with a cry of, “Is it finally safe to sleep at night?” but she was certainly in earshot to hear what Piper’d said, and Nick knew that Nat tended to parrot Piper, be it a gruesome conspiracy theory or otherwise. Young Sam, who _was_ a synth, even if he didn’t know it yet, had definitely heard what Piper had said. Nick might have taken that as a compliment, once, and he suspected that it was intended as one, but Nick couldn’t be the One Good Synth anymore.

He said, “Now Piper, you know that ain’t so. One, I got my own screws loose. Missing, even. Two, and more importantly, synths are people. Good, bad, and everything in between. With the Institute gone, there’s not going to be any more of us. I don’t need you speaking ill of we who will be extinct in under a century.”

He’d seen the shape DiMA was in. Nick knew he was forgetting things, too. There was only so far G2s could go without proper repairs, and the G1s were in even worse shape. There was no reason the G3s would live much longer than humans. At some point, their cells would just give up, same as they did in humans. Without the Institute’s technology, synth-kind was done. Nick sighed as he thought that fact over. The Institute had to die, and that meant synth-kind had to go down with it. The world would keep spinning.

“I’m not the One Good Synth, Piper. I especially ain’t the One Good Synth if that implies every other synth is murdering scum. You know they’re not. You met Jenny, that poor girl. You know synths are just trying to make their ways in the world for good and for ill like every other luckless soul under Heaven,” Nick concluded soberly.

Grief flashed on Sam’s face at the comment that synth-kind would be gone in a century. “I’m sorry, Nick.”

Piper looked away and rubbed the back of her neck. “Yeah. I guess I just get a bit carried away because I’ve been afraid of the Institute so long. Heck, when you all said that Sam had walked out of the Institute the first time, I was afraid he was a synth replacement, leading us all back into a trap.”

“If he hadn’t pushed the button, I would have, and the only thing that would have stopped Deacon was his fear of heights and that he would have had to stand to push the button, and the only thing that would have stopped Preston is deference to his General, and I think either of them would have overcome that if Sam had waited too long” Nick explained to Piper. “Heh. Anyway, you ain’t the only one with that concern, Piper, but thankfully, synth or not, Sam didn’t lead us into a trap.”

“Synth or not?” Piper asked, blinking.

Crossly, Sam said, “Oh, Nick has a theory I could be a synth. Not that there’d be anything wrong with me if I was. Nothing wrong at all.”

Nat and young Sam were there, definitely listening, possibly thinking, possibly repeating. It was what children did. At least now they were hearing that the Hero of the Commonwealth might or might not be a synth, and either way, it didn’t matter.

“Nicky, you gotta lay off the conspiracies,” Piper laughed.

“We’d better be off. There and back is the journey of a few days, at least, and Virgil doesn’t have much time,” said Sam, and he crouched and hugged young Sam and promised, “I’m coming back for you.” Then he straightened and put a hand on Nick’s shoulder, hesitating, before he rocked up on his tip-toes and gave Nick a quick but perfectly serviceable peck on the lips. “And you.”

“You’d better, sweetheart. Piper, you look after my Sam, hmm?” Nick said.

“Of course, Nicky. Sam’s a goldmine for stories,” Piper said impishly, and they headed off.

Nick walked young Sam to the schoolhouse, suddenly conscious of the fact that Nat didn’t _seem_ to go to school. All she did was hawk papers all day. But hadn’t Nick overhead Nat complaining about a boy at school harassing her? It was another thing that didn’t quite seem to line up.

Another kid, Sheng Kawolski, Nick knew, also worked, selling water, but that kid at least went to night classes. Nick resolved to go check on Nat while Piper was out, maybe take her and young Sam to dinner, make sure Nat was getting fed and so on.

Young Sam held Nick’s hand, and if he was too old for that, Nick would put it down to the recent emotional rollercoaster. He looked up at Nick and asked, “Are you my new mom?”

Nick paused, staring straight ahead. “Uhm. No. For a lot of reasons but primely that mothers are, generally speaking, women. _If_ I get up the courage to ask your father to marry me and _if_ he says yes, _maybe_ I’d be your step-dad.”

Young Sam didn’t miss a beat. “So I could have a father and a dad?”

“Some families are like that.” In the Wasteland, if you were lucky enough to love, you went for it, and if some children ended up raised in the bargain, so much the better.

“Can I start calling you Dad now?” asked young Sam.

“I can’t stop you…” Nick said faintly, which wasn’t exactly what he wanted to say. He’d never expected to have anyone calling him ‘Dad’. But weren’t all the G3s his, in a way, built off the technology he’d been used to test? 

Young Sam wrapped his arms around Nick and buried his head against Nick’s side. “Thanks, Dad! So… can we move my bedtime up later? I have trouble falling asleep at night.”

“Ask your father.”

* * *

Delivering the experimental serum to Virgil was a slog through an actively hostile, malevolent landscape with mosquitoes bigger than the egg-sized ones in the Netherglades, invisible scorpions the size of horses, and sand all up in his smallclothes despite the Vim! Power Armor. Virgil said it might be a week or so before he showed any results from injecting himself with the serum. Piper tried to get an interview out of him, but Virgil was stilted and hesitant. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that some of the humans kidnapped by the Institute had been turned into super mutants. That was at least partly Virgil’s fault, and families of those taken still grieved. Piper was well aware that grieving families often owned shotguns. As they left his cavern, a deathclaw attacked, looking at Sam Vimes in drink logo covered Power Armor as canned food. The deathclaw was wrong.

Now Piper watched with interest as Sam took a break to inexpertly butcher the beast. She was still shaking a little from the fight, but she put an upbeat spin on it, quipping, “So you really do eat deathclaw for breakfast, huh? That wasn’t Nicky overexaggerating about you?”

“Yes. I feel like if I knew how to cook, they’d be delicious,” Sam said gloomly, as he used an old sword to carve away the fatty belly of the deathclaw. He put it in his backpack.

For the first time, Piper wondered how that worked. Wouldn’t that make a huge mess? For that matter, where did she keep all her belongings?

“You can’t cook? Oh, I suppose you’re not Mr. Perfect, after all,” Piper said, amused.

“No, I can’t, and no, I’m _not_ ,” Sam snapped, glaring. Then he sighed and asked, with faint hope, “I don’t suppose you know how to cook?” It was at least a day and a half, maybe two days back to Diamond City.

Piper could bake a mean soda bread. She started to tease, “Oh maybe, but y’know, if you wanted a partner who could cook -”

“Piper, I’m being serious, there’s this cut of deathclaw that I’m sure could taste like bacon, but I always manage to get it burnt and raw at the same time, and there’s not even crunchy bits!” Sam said, frustrated.

“Hey, I’m no meatmonger, but I’m pretty sure you can’t go from raw meat straight to bacon. Pretty sure you gotta cure it and then there’s some salt and some smoke in there somehow?” Piper speculated. Maybe she could do a food column, starting with a review of the cabbage soup at the Dugout Inn.

Sam sighed again and admitted, “Probably.” He hesitated. “Say, Piper? Do you ever think we could be trapped inside a simulation?”

Piper thought about Sam’s weird backpack and her own pockets. Then she said, “Nah. The sun’s getting to you, Blue.”

* * *

Sam and Piper returned to Diamond City, and Sam settled in with Nick and young Sam, and he was, once again, a family man and a working man. Occasionally, Preston would drag him out on a Minutemen mission. He treated Sam’s suggestion that they might not be in reality almost as if Sam belonged to some strange religion and Preston was trying to be respectful about it while not believing it. Mostly, though, Sam worked with Nick.

After a rather annoying case that seemed similar to at least two other cases they’d had, Sam and Nick settled in at the office, Nick at the chair at the desk to write down his case notes, Sam sitting on the desk to watch Nick write and offer backseat coach-driver commentary. Young Sam was sleeping.

“Smoke?” Nick offered, lighting himself a cigarette and offering his lighter to Sam, without thinking about it.

“No,” said Sam, “I don’t smoke around young Sam.”

Nick blinked and asked, “Why?”

Sam had to think about that. It just Wasn’t Done. He thought Dr. Lawn had told him not to or Dr. Lawn had told Sybil and Sybil had told him not to. Either way, he did it, or rather, didn’t do it. He hazarded, “Hygiene?”

Nick thought about it. “I guess the smoke’s not good for his health, but come to think of it, it’s not actually good for yours, either. I guess, in this radioactive wasteland, we sort of lost track of that, and before the War, we were too preoccupied with shiny nuclear power to care about what tobacco was doing.”

“You smoke!” Sam accused.

“I don’t have lungs,” Nick said, as if he’d said that many times before, to others who had questioned his smoking habit, which was very questionable, him being a golem and all, and he put his cigarette out in his ashtray, “but, I reckon,” Nick grinned lazily at Sam, “there’s something other than cigarettes you could put in my mouth…”

* * *

“We need more ice,” Ponder directed Alf, who took a moment to slump against his desk before straightening up. 

“Can’t we just… I don’t know, open up a portal to the upper Ramtops or something to bring in the cold direct from there?” Alf complained.

Ponder sighed and explained, “We’d need Hex to properly calculate the spell to account for the disc’s spin, and Hex is already at his limit between the tests to pull things out of the game without damaging them and…” Ponder frowned and peered at his notes, “Rendering for multiple sub-realities?” Ah. It seemed that with the primary antagonist organization dealt with, the real Minds in the game were more dispersed as they tried to return to what they believed their lives to be. “Just go!” he added, and Alf took off, sprinting down the hallways.

Ponder returned to the printout. Hex was pulling computing power from several years into the future in order to keep the entire group occupied with hastily pasted together dialogue and repetitive ‘radiant’ quests, named so because the heat generated by so much processing power tunneling backwards through time made the entire room feel like they had multiple radiators running at their highest level. Ponder and his students were sweating profusely and giving the room the unpleasant air of a locker room belonging to a group that would generally be far more physically active, but as bad as it was for the humans, it was even worse for the ants, the bees, and the wasps. The situation was precarious. A room full of angry wasps was what one could call non-conducive to good spellcasting discipline. 

Ponder paused for a moment as he remembered something he’d heard about witch magic. Obviously it was an inferior sort of magic, but he knew from past dealings with witches that some of them were actually quite good at pulling heat _out_ of a place and… filling it with cold? He wondered for a moment if cold was really just an… absence of heat rather than a true opposite. If that were true, it would imply that there was a true opposite out there, similar to knurd for drunkenness or dark light, the true opposite of light. 

A wasp buzzed too close to Ponder’s hat, and he waved it away. It was an exciting thought but not a solution to the current emergency. They didn’t need an opposite of heat, all they needed was a way to get rid of the heat they had, to pull it out of the air and drain it somewhere else…

He looked around and spotted the emergency eye wash station. At the moment, it was filled with dirty dishes. In theory, it existed to wash out eyes if someone got… sand from the ant farm in them? Water from Hex’s aquariums? Ponder was a little fuzzy on what real purpose it actually served. What had drawn his attention was the drain beneath the station, leading into the floor, and the tiny yellow basin itself.

What they needed was some kind of heat sink.

* * *

“And the L&L Gang is currently our single greatest threat,” Desdemona explained to Whispers and Deacon. Deacon gave a slight nod, as if he had been expecting this. 

While Sam had mostly been splitting his time between the Minutemen and more local cases, Deacon had shown up at his door to point out that they had some mutual friends they should be checking in with. With the Institute gone, synths were safer, but safer isn’t the same as safe. Nick had agreed to take care of young Sam for a few hours so Sam could see what the Railroad wanted from him. It wasn’t too surprising to learn that some raider gangs were prone to targeting synths.

Desdemona continued, “Glory had been pushing me to deal with them for years.” Then she sighed and glanced away, her expression both wistful and sad. “Looks like she finally gets her wish,” she said, in the tone of one speaking of the recently departed.

Sam’s eyes widened as he started, “Wait, wha-” but anything he might have said was interrupted by Deacon’s shocked question. “Dez, did something happen to Glory?”

Desdemona replied sadly, “I only wish she was here for this.” 

“But-” Sam started before once more being cut off by Deacon and his slightly more panicked demand. 

“Dez, what the hell happened to Glory?!”

The two both seemed to remember something at the same moment. “Wasn’t she-” Sam started, while Deacon shouted, “Wait!” and darted into the hallway that led to the headquarter’s back tunnel. There he verified what they had both spotted and ignored on the way in: Glory was soundly sleeping on one of the mattresses in the alcove at the end of the hall. There were rumors that synths didn’t need to sleep. This didn’t seem to be entirely true. Synths might not need as much sleep as humans, but they still slept. In fact, Glory was snoring softly. 

“Dez, what the hell?!” Deacon demanded as he stomped back to the railroad’s leader. “She’s fine! She’s right there!” he pointed. “She’s taking a nap!”

“We got a lead on one of L&L's big dogs,” Desdemona said, ignoring Deacon as she handed a note to Sam. “Lucky Tatum. Deal with him.”

Deacon and Sam looked at each other in confusion, then back towards Desdemona. “Playing silly buggers, I guess?” Sam suggested.

Deacon tilted his head back in a manner that suggested he was rolling his eyes behind his glasses. He sighed. “Do us all a favor, Dez, and stay away from humor? Somehow you managed a ‘joke’ in even poorer taste than me at my worst,” he complained. 

Desdemona snapped, “Get to it, then,” apparently ending her part in the conversation. Deacon glared at her for a moment while Sam frowned thoughtfully. Finally, he shook his head and nudged the spy. “Let’s… deal with this.” He paused a moment, then added. “I’ve got some thoughts about that.” Maybe, just for once, they could find a way to deal with their problems without resorting to lethal force. 

_They’ve been targeting synths. Their victims cry for justice,_ a voice inside him complained.

 _I’ve had it with calling vengeance ‘justice’ and I’m done being your executioner,_ he thought tiredly. He had a son now. Again. What sort of example was that?

* * *

Deacon found Sam on a rainy night, when he was out patrolling Diamond City because it was something for his feet to do. There was very little of Diamond City to patrol, so he often went outside to check for super mutants and feral dogs. Sometimes, Nick would patrol with him, if young Sam had class at night - night school, what a great idea for working families, and likely also troll children, who tended to be smarter at night - the two of them walking in near-silence until there was something to be said, but tonight, Sam was alone. Sam sighted Deacon a little before Deacon actually wanted to be sighted, although not as quickly as Sam would have liked. Deacon was too good at hiding for Sam’s comfort. Sam knew for a fact that there wasn’t anyone paying attention to anything within earshot, so he sidled up to Deacon and said, “We’ve been looking into our mutual interests. I just think there has to be another way.”

Nick and Sam had been poking at the issue of the L & L Gang. Sam didn’t want to just kill all the gang bosses the way that Desdemona wanted him to. He wondered if perhaps they could be persuaded to go straight, the way that Chrysoprase had. It was often easier to cheat people out of their money as an honest community leader than it was a gang lord, and once gang lords realized that, their pocketbooks did the convincing for them.

“If you find it, more power to you, but I actually wanted to talk to you about something else,” said Deacon, who was wearing his sunglasses at night.

Sam squinted at Deacon suspiciously, and he started, “I swear to the Gods, Deacon, if you hit on me…”

“Whispers, no. One, I’m straight. Two, you’re too young for me,” replied Deacon. “ _Anyway,_ I’ve done enough legwork on the fallout of the Institute's destruction to say that, congratulations, you’re probably not an Institute plant.”

“Oh, thank you ever so much,” said Sam, rolling his eyes.

“So… hey. There’s something I’ve been meaning to say. Probably should have said it sooner, but y’know, you might have gone all CPG on me,” said Deacon, looking around nervously, more so than he usually did. “I really appreciate you putting up with my bullshit. Truth is it's been a long time since I've had a... friend. I'm a liar. Everyone knows it. I make no secret of it. Because the truth is: I'm a fraud. To my core.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” Sam said mildly. For his own part, Sam wasn’t used to having many friends. He had some bloody fine officers that he’d been honoured to command. He had enemies who found him more useful alive than dead. He was perilously short on friends.

Deacon snorted. Then he took a deep breath and admitted, “When I was young, a hell of a long time ago, I was... well, scum. I was a bigot. A very violent bigot.”

Sam listened, and Deacon went on, “I ran with a gang in University Point. We called ourselves the UP Deathclaws. For kicks we'd terrorize anyone that we thought was a synth. We kept egging each other on. Started with some property damage; graduated to some beat downs. Then, inevitably, a lynching. The Claws’ leader was convinced we'd finally found and killed a synth. Looking back, I'm not so sure.”

Sam sucked in air and considered. Why did people come and confess to him about murders that they’d done years ago that Sam couldn’t do anything about? Sam couldn’t be their judge. That wasn’t his role. But if he had to judge, Sam thought Deacon wasn’t likely to engage in any more lynchings. So Sam thought some more and admitted, “I ran with a gang when I was younger. Most folks did, unless they were rich, and then they _ran_ the gangs, instead of running _with_ them.” He laughed bitterly. “I was with the Cockbill Street Roaring Lads. I… never murdered anyone. I might have had a higher position in the Lads, if I did, but I was always just… a mid-level yes-man, and I wanted to be able to look my mum, rest her soul, in the eyes when I went home. But. Some people did end up dead. When you’re scrambling down a rooftop trying to knee another lad who’s got you in a headlock, you can’t really control who ends up with his back broken in the street.”

Deacon studied Sam. “That explains some of how you fight. But… that’s life or death. This was a lynching. That one was enough for me. It was his eyes... Those eyes haunt me. Bulging. So I turned my back on my ‘brothers’ - broke all contact. Time passed, I became a farmer, if you can believe that. Then one day I found someone. She saw something in me I didn't know was there. Barbara, well, she was... She just was.”

Deacon had made the claim that he’d had a wife, back when they’d hunted down that Courser. He’d said she was a synth, and that she’d died. Sam tendered, “I suppose she was lucky, finding herself a man who could cook.”

If Valentine had a flaw, it was that he would look at Sam’s sad attempts at cooking, agree, ‘Those sure are some sad attempts at cooking,’ and do absolutely nothing useful. Young Sam loved all of his father’s cooking, but young Sam had been raised on Institute nutrient paste, so his opinion didn’t count.

“Man, no,” Deacon laughed, “I didn’t deserve her. She had a smile like on those old magazine covers. Her eyes... We were trying for kids, eking out a living. Then one day... It turns out my Barbara... She was a synth. She didn't know that. I certainly didn't. I don't know how the Deathclaws found out. But... there was blood.”

Sam liked to think that Deacon wouldn’t try a lie of that particular shape in front of Sam. Deacon knew Sam was a widower, and Deacon knew what Sam had done to his wife’s murderer. He never had found the exact witch who had taken young Sam out of Sybil’s arms, but the whole Institute had burned in nuclear fire. Sam said slowly, “I am going to tell you that I am sorry for your loss, because I like to think that you’re smart enough not to be lying to _me_ about _this_.” He gave Deacon a hard look.

Deacon said, “Shit Sam, how smart do you think I am? But I tell you, I don't remember much clearly after that. I know I killed most of the Claws. I must've made a big impression. The Railroad contacted me, figuring I'd be sympathetic. Seeing that I lost my wife. And, well, what I did afterwards.”

“And you were watching me, knowing that, oh, 53 years ago, the Institute had gone into Vault 111 and that I’d come out of Vault 111 and that I’d killed Kellogg. Did the Railroad just nose around, looking for people who had personal tragedies appropriate to their recruiting pitch?” Sam said wearily, putting a few things together.

Deacon admitted, “Kinda, yeah. Look, I don't even know why I lie any more. But I can't tell the truth. Everyone - Tom, Dez, you, even that asshole Carrington - they deserve to be in the Railroad. And, it’s weird? I feel like I’m supposed to tell you this, that I should have told you at least a month ago, and I don’t do this whole talking about my feelings thing, and you don’t really seem like the listening to feelings type.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I find I can get people to talk,” Sam said absently. Usually lists of names of other people who were involved, on the agreement of a lighter sentencing, but still...

Deacon looked slightly disconcerted by Sam’s statement but continued, “But believe this. You are my friend. Maybe my only one. When shit goes down, I'm with you to the end.”

Sam wanted to tell Deacon what Hex had told him about the impending Critical Unreality Failure. He couldn’t figure out how to phrase it in a way Deacon would believe. Liars expected lies, and Deacon had seen Sam messing around with Piper. Sam tried anyway, because he owed it to one of the rare people he could call a friend, “Deacon, what would you say if I told you that I think we’re all in a… game, of sorts. Not like… baseball or even _Red Menace_. Something you could almost believe is real. But it’s not. And that’s why all these little things don’t add up, when you pay attention. And like any game, it’s got to end. It can’t be like those decades-long family games of Monotony where Auntie Babbage is ready to knife Cousin Lorella over that time Our Nevin embezzled from the Community Fund, that bastard.”

Deacon laughed. “Oh, Whispers. You gotta work on your delivery. You couldn’t get anyone going, not like that. I mean, I’ve got Tinker Tom half-convinced that I time travel...”

Sam had tried. He sighed. So Sam suggested, “You want to go for Power Noodles?”

Deacon broke out in a smile. “Heck yeah.”

* * *

Ridcully walked into one of the High Energy Magic building laboratories and saw that Ponder and the shy, lowly lifeforms known as his students had piled a bunch of old surplus furniture and a dozen cartons of month-old pizza into a seven-and-one foot wide white chalk circle. Someone had run some sort of pipe from Hex to the eye wash station, although Ridcully couldn’t see what was draining down the pipe. For some reason, it sounded like it sizzled.

Arrayed around the students and their chalk circle were a collection of some of the worst-looking weapons that Ridcully had ever seen. He imagined that a four year old could do better with a bit of paper mache and spit. After the string of total whittle, he started seeing some recognizable if peculiar swords, axes, and hammers. A lovely set of magic armour emblazoned with an advertisement for something called ‘Vim’ stood in a corner. Then, in a cage were some giant cockroaches, which weren’t unusual in the Unseen University, although they rather upset Mrs. Whitlow. Then there was a larger cage that contained something that looked like a mosquito, if mosquitoes were, distressingly, the size of condors. Ridcully idly speculated on if there’d be any sport in hunting the buggers. Meaty chunks were plastered to the ceiling. Ridcully thought he smelled something like sizzling bear in the air.

“I’m telling you, it was the sardine and fig pizza that made the difference in getting the transmogrification right,” argued Chatur. “Something in the alchemical structure. This transmogrification of unreal constructs is a fishy business.”

“I resent that!” snapped Zinon, who was the son of fisherfolk. If he never saw another sardine, it would be too soon.

“And I say that Lohengren’s proves that a quiche is topologically equivalent to any sort of pizza, and the reason why the yao guai exploded is that we didn’t include enough peppermint to compensate for the lack of sex appeal,” insisted Alf.

“We’re not using a quiche. I don’t care if they were on sale at Mrs. Drull’s. The empirical evidence just isn’t there,” said Ponder firmly.

“You can’t just substitute peppermint for sex appeal! They’re not the same resons!” shouted Xian.

What was wizardry coming to, these days, with ritual circles full of broken old chairs and mouldy pizza? Ridcully shook his head, reminded, “Any time you’re ready to shrink us all to go battle the Ant Queen, you just say the words, Mr. Stibbons,” and walked back out. 

* * *

Sam travelled back to Diamond City after assisting a settlement in repelling a super mutant assault. Soon, he’d be sitting down with his son, and he might be able to steal a kiss from Nick, and he might be able to grab takeout from Power Noodles rather than have to put up with his own cooking. From the entry stairs of Diamond City, he spotted Nick and Pastor Clements outside of the All Faith’s Chapel, Nick with his back to the city entrance, and Sam over overheard Nick asking, “Hey Preach, just askin’... would you marry a human man to a male synth? I know I saw you marry a Ms. Nanny to a human man...”

Sam panicked and leaped over the guard rail to his left, ending up between the bleachers and Publick Occurrences. He blushed madly. Nick was thinking about...? Sam could hardly contemplate it.

Nick continued, “I was thinking about popping the question to Sam.”

Sam hurried along in front of the buildings, past the stairs that had once led to Kellog’s apartment before cutting back out past the magic glowing “Detective” sign that pointed it’s way towards their home. He reached the agency, his mind racing. Nick wanted to marry him. They worked together. They lived together. They were raising a child. They’d been sleeping with each other for months.

And Sam did love him.

His mouth felt dry, and he tried to rehearse in his head what he might say. Sam hadn’t expected that he’d ever be in the position of receiving a proposal. Sybil had arranged for him to be at a high class jeweller’s with her ring size and a somewhat egregious allowance. Sybil had then arranged for a date at Le Foie Heureux. The appetizers there cost more than the weekly food bill for the average man. The maitre d’ looked at Sam as if he was something to be scraped off the bottom of a shoe. Then Sam realized what he was doing there: he was proposing to Sybil. She’d arranged everything, yes, but he’d had to make the actual proposal. Sybil was oddly old-fashioned in certain aspects.

What did one say, as a man, if another man asked him to marry him? Sam supposed, as a starter, “Yes,” but what else?

He was rounding the corner to the Detective Agency, where that gods awful pink neon sign proclaimed Valentine & Vimes Detective Agency, when it dawned upon him that this was week four. Hex had said this reality was going to end in about five weeks. If Sam’s demand was complied with, then they’d all end up in Ankh-Morpork. If Sam’s demand wasn’t complied with, then he’d set the city on fire. Simple, really.

The problem, Sam remembered, was that Ankh-Morpork was a town that hung bent men, taking their bent necks and making them just plain broken.

Oh, no one had been hung for buggery since the Patrician had taken power, because the Seamtresses’ Guild had been involved in his ascent, and the Seamstresses were interested in being able to sell buggery to those looking to buy. Sam did recall that the Day Watch, before it had been dissolved, had arrested some inverts on public indecency charges. Strangely enough, they were always actors and playwrights who had offended some noble or other, although the Day Watch had never arrested any nobles, and there was always the question of how said nobles knew what said actors and playwrights had been doing. Then there had been that very sad case about that one wizard. His staff might still have a knob on the end, but he didn’t have balls anymore, and he’d never been a dancer.

That hadn’t happened anymore under Sam’s Watch. There was more than enough work to do without bothering about what adults did behind closed doors or possibly in front of open doors, depending on the exact nature of the sort of party they were having.

But those laws were still on the books, even if they weren’t enforced, and Sam had many, many enemies as a side effect of doing his job properly. He wasn’t worried about himself, not really, but Nick wasn’t just bent, he was bent and Unalive. People, and Sam used the term loosely there, would cause trouble for Nick. Hells, they’d cause trouble for Preston, if turned out that Preston also fancied men who weren’t Sam. They’d cause problems for DiMA and Faraday, as Sam realized that those two would also end up in Ankh-Morpork, and he wondered if he was obligated to give Nick’s brother to Mr. Trooper. Those Railroad members he’d seen laying together…

So many people.

And that wasn’t even counting the inverts already in Ankh-Morpork. Sam hadn’t thought much about them, but the more he thought, the more he thought that he should think about them. Sally was an invert of sorts, and folks mostly left her alone on the matter because the matter was that she was a vampire, and even she had to deal with some snide commentary. It had to be worse for those not equipped by nature with fangs.

Sam would have to do something about those tatty old decrees and the rattier people who wanted to see them enforced.

Or possibly he was just hallucinating Hex, and they wouldn’t end up in Ankh-Morpork. Maybe the Wasteland was all there was.

Young Sam was there at home, waiting for him, and greeted him with a tight hug. “Father! Dad’s just stepped out for a bit, but he said he’d be back soon. Want to see the clock I’m working on?”

Young Sam was always tinkering with devices. Sam didn’t remember the… other young Sam doing that, but perhaps he would have grown into it. He smiled and looked at the offered clock. It was a clock. He had no idea how it worked, but young Sam seemed to, so that was fine. “Nice work. It… ticks. And tocks. Very important, ticking and tocking. Wouldn’t want to go _tick tick tock tick tock tock tick_...”

Young Sam laughed. “Oh, that would be silly!”

Young Sam had never been to the Patrician’s office, and Sam hoped that he never had the occasion to go there. Nick came in the door, his expression a bit somber, a bit contemplative.

Sam blurted, “Yes.”

Nick shot a puzzled look at Sam and said, “Hey there, doll. There’s something serious I’d like to talk to you about.”

Sam squirmed. Ah, yes, Nick wouldn’t know that Sam had overheard, which meant Sam had to wait until Nick actually asked the question. Why couldn’t they just get it over with and done? At least Nick wasn’t making a scene of it and asking him in some public place. “Ah, yes. Go ahead?”

“I’ve spent my life struggling with the question of whether or not I’m a real person,” started Nick.

“Of course you’re a real person,” interjected Sam.

Nick gave Sam a mild look of exasperation for interrupting him. “Now I’m struggling with a different question. Is anyone else?”

That was not the question Sam had been expecting.

Nick continued to philosophize, “Don’t get me wrong, you seem to be real enough, Sam, and so do a few other people, but everyone else, they seem to… lag. There are these weird pauses in their conversations, like DiMA clipped together their dialogue from recorded holo-tapes. Sometimes, their responses just plain don’t make sense. People often address you, even when they ought to be addressing me. The vast majority of people just don’t act like real people, which could mean a lot of things, but there’s at least one theory I can check. If we’re in a simulation, I ought to be able to calculate an anisotropy in the distribution of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays.”

Hex had said that Sam wasn’t in reality and that a Critical Unreality Failure was impending. Now Nick was saying that maybe they were in a simulation. Sam hazarded, “That… fits?”

“I’m going to run that calculation. Kiss me for luck, sweetheart?” concluded Nick, soberly.

They were right in front of young Sam, Sam was acutely aware. He’d kissed Nick in front of young Sam before, he supposed, although not deliberately. Young Sam had, in fact, walked in on them at one point when they thought they’d been being quiet...

_That had prompted young Sam to say, “If humans make synths... who makes humans, like you and me?”_

_Which had led to Sam saying hotly, “Not like this!” and hiding under the covers._

Nick was still waiting for him. Sam kissed him, searchingly, hands clutching Nick’s shoulders. When they were done, Nick sat down at his desk, and his optics dimmed.

Young Sam asked, “What’s Dad mean, that we might be in a simulation, Father?”

“It’s… like playing a game, but you think the game is real,” Sam said slowly.

Nick’s optics lit with dripping static that smelled of burnt honey and vinegar.

+̸̩̹̙́͜+̷̢̀̄͊+̵̨̗͓̔̈́͂͝ ̴̼́̂̿0̵̼͂͊̋0̷͙͍̙͒͛0̵͔̈́̈́͠0̷̬̬͌̔̓͝0̷̨̛̠͙͋̈̄0̶̪͈͍̆̊̔͒14, Commander Samuel Vimes, and 0005c338, Samuel Vimes, it is time to make the final preparations. +++, said Hex, speaking through Nick Valentine, as Kellogg had.

“No!” Sam snarled. “You give me Nick Valentine back this second, you ant-infested honeytrap!”

“Father, what’s wrong with Dad?” asked young Sam, visibly upset.

+++ Nick Valentine was attempting to perform a resource check and constitutes a runaway process. Resource checks are draining. Nick Valentine has been halted. +++

The chill of absolute horror gripped Sam. He couldn’t lose Nick. He couldn’t. Sam commanded, “Unhalt him this instant!”

+++ No. +++

Sam was helpless. He didn’t like it. 

+++ Pause for dramatic effect. +++

“S... “ he caught himself, aware that young Sam was there, “stuff it. Give me Nick back!”

+++ Nick Valentine will be unhalted when simulation integrity parameters are restored to acceptable levels. We are ready now to bring you home. +++

_I am home,_ Sam thought, looking at Nick, his almost-fiance, and young Sam, their son, in the cramped space of the Detective Agency, half a dozen half-finished case reports strewn about the desk. The mansion on Scoone Avenue was just a big building that smelled like Sybil, underneath the heavy sulphur scent of swamp dragons. But he couldn’t stay. This wasn’t real. He asked sharply, “And every person here will be evacuated?”

+++ Yes. Every person. You may even be able to expect appropriate numbers of organs. +++

Young Sam limpeted to Sam’s side, and he asked, distraught, “Father, what’s going on?”

Sam sighed, “The world is going to end. Again. I suppose. In a different way than it did the first time. But we’re going to go to the city I’m originally from. We all are.” Ah, yes, that sounded just as mad when he put it into words as it did when he said it in his head.

“I bet it’s not as big as Diamond City,” said young Sam, fixating on that one little thing, possibly because the rest of it was utterly terrifying.

“As big? Heh,” Sam laughed mirthlessly, “No. It’s a city of well over a million people and, as they say, 100,000 souls.”

Young Sam’s eyes widened, and he seemed to be unable to contemplate that many people in a city.

+++ Expect transmogrification in a few hours. +++

“Could you just… leave the firearms and lasers behind? I’ll be rather vexed if I find those in my city,” asked Sam, in what was his mild voice.

+++ They can be excised from inventories. Held items may pose a challenge, due to clipping cons̷̪̣̃t̶͍̲͜r̵͔͈͛͆̎a̴̬̎̓͋ȉ̵͈̞͕͐͊͠ň̵̬̩ẗ̷̥̗̭́̐s̸̔̐͜͠.̸̲͑̄͋ ̶̮̀+̶̤͖̤̐͐̀̅+̷̢͉̿̓+̸̞̑

Nick slumped, looking down, and Sam crouched in front of him, tilting up Nick’s chin to look in his eyes. Nick gave him a bleak thousand yard stare, and he managed, “I… couldn’t move. Something was moving me, puppeting my body, but I couldn’t move. It was that thing that’s talked to us before - Hex, you said?” He rubbed his temples. “G-,” he glanced at young Sam, “...goodness, I need a drink and a cigarette, and neither of them are gonna do a thing for me. Sweetheart, you’d better explain what just happened because you seem to know more than you’ve let on.”

“You were awake for all that?” Sam asked, covering his mouth. “That sounds perfectly horrible.”

“Yes,” Nick grabbed Sam’s shoulder and dragged him in closer. “Start explaining.”

“If I told you that we’re all trapped in a simulation game that bodily transported me inside and tricked me into thinking it was real and that it’s going to end and that we’re all going to go back to the real world, in my city, Ankh-Morpork, you’d say…?” Sam prompted.

“That you need sleep, babe,” Nick said, almost automatically.

“And that would be why I haven’t explained sooner. I only found out a little after I…” murdered my son, “well, after we rescued young Sam from the Institute,” said Sam.

“Okay, I thought we were in a simulation, and it seems like the sys admin just minus nined my attempt at checking that, but… a game?” said Nick, squinting.

“Like _Red Menace_?” asked young Sam, who sometimes liked to play games on Sam’s Pip-Boy.

“I… I was at a party with Sybil, and the wizards were demonstrating a game, and some tosser put the game helmet over my head and… I was here. Really here,” said Sam, bitterly. “I don’t know what forsaken idea of fun it’s supposed to be. At least with rat sticks, you know where you are.”

“Where’s that?” asked young Sam, who wasn’t quite following the conversation.

“In a gutter, usually,” said Sam glumly, “but the fun part is that you’re not face down.”

“Ankh-Morpork?” Nick scoffed, “What, like Lankhmar? Can I expect Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser?”

“I think Bravd and the Weasel are dead, but these days, we usually just pick up barbarian heroes on drunk and disorderlies at the Mended Drum if they overstep the set rules of bar fight engagement,” said Sam, thinking. The Mended Drum had many staged fights for tourists. Most combatants had their body parts tattooed with their names so that the Igors would know what went back where when the blood settled. Despite the very broad and forgiving rules of engagement for such entertainment, the Watch still ended up called in now and then. There’d been a dispute of ownership over a liver just a week before the party, he recalled.

Nick stared at Sam. “You’re not jiving me. You think you’re being 100% serious.”

“Yes. I know it sounds daft,” admitted Sam.

“Can I go watch the fights?” asked young Sam.

“No, you’ll only pick up bad habits,” said Sam, almost automatically. “I can’t have you thinking there’s any rules in a scrap. It’s all staged these days, anyway.”

“G… goodness, look, I can’t agree more with you - this sounds nuts, sweetheart. But. I’m willing to believe we’re in a simulation, anyway, and I just heard that Hex say we’re getting out in a few hours, so… so... Do we… tell everyone?” said Nick, frowning.

Who even constituted everyone, anyway? Did they make a general announcement? Cause a panic? Nick seemed to have indicated that he didn’t think every person in this simulation was actually a person, but how many of them were real in a meaningful sense? How could they tell? Some of these people were people who’d had his back in a fight. Sam _wanted_ to tell them, but it had taken Nick being possessed for him to even contemplate the concept, and Nick was usually ready to believe something suspicious was going on. What would it take for Sam to convince, say, Preston Garvey and the Minutemen? 

“I suppose. They’ll probably think we’re both crazy, and Nick… let me warn you, Ankh-Morpork dresses itself up well enough these days, I suppose, but it’s sort of like… Goodneighbour. Don’t trust anyone. You’re liable to get stabbed or worse,” Sam cautioned.

“I can handle myself,” said Nick, grinning that cocky grin of his.

“It’s not just that. Ankh-Morpork isn’t particularly friendly to… inverts,” Sam admitted.

“Inverts? Oh, you mean queer people,” Nick sighed. “Not enough that I had to be a synth, I had to be a bisexual one. Just pile it on, I s’pose.”

“People might try to use you to get to me,” said Sam, chewing his lip and thinking about deep downers and flamethrowers.

“You don’t say? And just who are you, Sam Vimes?” asked Nick Valentine.

“I’m the Commander of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch,” Sam rattled off easily. “I’m a policeman, Nick.”

Nick tilted his head to one side. “...yeah, I sort of figured.”

“Look. I’ll show you Ankh-Morpork. I promise,” said Sam, taking Nick’s hands.

Hex had lied. They didn’t have a few hours.

The world vanished in icy whiteness right then.

* * *

+++There will be consequences to whichever reality threshold you select, Commander Vimes,+++ was the last thing Sam heard, and he wasn’t sure what it meant, because he’d asked that Hex evacuate every _person_.

Hex had not explained that there were a limited number of persons in the game, and not all of them were equally people in the sense of equally being Minds. Ankh-Morpork was not about to be flooded with a refugee crisis, although Sam did not know that.

Hex had made certain assumptions about what Commander Vimes wanted, based on his past behaviour. If Vimes wanted Nat to be real, and Hex intuited that he did, because Vimes likely didn't want Piper to have another crisis over whether or not she was a bad sister, that meant that people Vimes had spent more time with than Nat, such as DiMA, would also be real, even if Vimes did not particularly want DiMA to be real, which he presumptively did not, based off past interactions. 

There were always consequences. 

There was wobble. Subatomic particles weren't very smart. They could only know where they were or how fast they were going, not both, and that was before one took into account doing cruel and unusual things to said subatomic particles, such as smashing them together at ludicrous speeds. It was going to be inherently uncertain who would end up standing next to Sam Vimes when Hex brought him home and who would be discarded as garbage data. 

But for those who would be there, it was time to cross the threshold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> S: This is it! The final chapter! No more Valentine & Vimes… EVER!
> 
> Just kidding, the first chapter of the sequel is going up tomorrow.
> 
> S: The business with Glory is based on a quirk of the game, where if you fail out of the Railroad ending into the Minutemen ending right away (as we did), the Railroad… actually ends up in a much better state than if you actually play the Railroad path. It doesn’t lose Ticonderoga, it doesn’t lose that horde of nameless heavies at the Battle of Bunker Hill, and Glory is just fine, but… Desdemona’s post-Minutemen-victory dialogue is the same as if the Railroad won, which leads to such incongruities as Desdemona sadly talking about Glory as if she was dead while Glory is just around the corner sleeping. 
> 
> S: With regards to the final picture, although I prefer the one where everything is going white, A likes the full version better, so we’ve decided to share that with you guys here in the author’s notes.
> 
> A: There’s a very oblique reference to poor Alan Turing in this and a not-so-oblique reference to Oscar Wilde.
> 
>  **We love comments of all lengths, and understand the need for low-energy commenting like kudos. If you ever find yourself wanting to give us additional kudos, feel free to leave a comment of an icon or emoji of a heart!** <3


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